Hyenas, Nollywood actors and albinos: Pieter Hugo's photos
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February 21, 2017
With his authentic yet surreal portraits, South African photographer Pieter Hugo reaches out to the marginalized. His exhibition "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is now on display at the Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
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Pieter Hugo's exhibition 'Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea'
With his authentic yet surreal portraits, South African photographer Pieter Hugo reaches out to the marginalized. His exhibition, "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" is now on at the Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Pieter Hugo: the photographer as an outsider
Pieter Hugo likes to photograph outsiders: scrap collectors, beggars, drug addicts. The white South African artist sees himself as an outsider, too. This is a self-portrait he took with his son. His photos, now on display at the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg, also question how children should be raised in post-apartheid South Africa.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Breaking with clichés
A man sleeps under a tree in Green Point Common Park, in Cape Town, on a foggy day. Typical photos of this park are filled with sunshine and visitors. This picture rather expresses loneliness and homelessness. The tree can also be seen as a symbol of South Africa: it is slowly growing, but it still has many problems and carries the heavy weight of history on its shoulders.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
What connects - and divides - people
What does it mean to be a family? What are the fragile relationships that make up a society? What brings people together? What divides them? These are some of the questions Pieter Hugo asks throughout his series "Kin."
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
At home in Soweto
This still life in the "Kin" photo series was taken in a Soweto house. It shows an ashtray, a pack of cigarettes, a plastic lid, two old remotes protected by plastic wrap, a 100-rand bill and some change on an old place mat. It all looks a little lonely and miserable.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
The hyena men
For a series called "The Hyena & Other Men," Pieter Hugo traveled through Nigeria together with the "hyena men," a group of wandering showmen who entertain people with their animals to make money. These pictures show wilderness paradoxically merging with its urban surroundings. They also explore dominance and submission in the relationship between men and animals.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Taxi ride with a monkey
Traveling along with the street performers, Hugo went to Kano, in the north of Nigeria. One day, one of the showmen stopped a taxi and negotiated a price with the driver, while the rest of the group was hiding in a bush - along with their hyenas, pythons and monkeys. When their colleague gave them a sign, the colorful bunch of people and animals jumped into the cab. The driver was fuming.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Traces of colonial powers
Botswana was a British colony that became independent in 1966. The country still retains many British traditions and symbols in its legal system. That is why the judges also wear the same robes and wigs as they had done while under colonial rule. Shown here is Justice Moatlhodi Marumo, a picture from the series "Judges of Botswana."
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Nollywood
Nigeria's film industry is the third largest in the world, after the US and India. Which themes appear in these films produced for a local audience? How does the country represent itself in pop culture? These questions drove Pieter Hugo to do a photo series called "Nollywood," in which he portrayed actors in Nigeria.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Focusing on the individual
For another series, Hugo photographed his friends and edited the pictures so that the details of their skin - whether freckles, blood vessels or sunburns - were contrasted in such a way that they could no longer be seen as black or white. The photographer aimed to emphasize each individual's features instead of the color of their skin.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
The generation after the genocide
Apartheid ended in 1994 in South Africa. That same year, a genocide decimated Rwanda. How do children born after the events deal with the tragic history of their country without having experienced it? This is the theme Hugo explored in his series called "1994," which portrays children born after 1994.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
The international perspective
Hugo produced his series "Flat Noodle Soup Talk" in Beijing. Here, too, he was interested by the contrasts between generations, between the people who grew up affected by the Chinese Communist Revolution and the country's youth, influenced by a state-controlled consumer society. Pieter Hugo's photos are on show in Wolfsburg until July 23, 2017.
Image: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
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A muscular tattooed man is standing half naked in front of a bush while tightly holding a baby in a romper suit. The man is staring into the camera with a dead serious expression on his face - just like the baby.
The picture features artist Pieter Hugo with his son in South Nature's Valley in South Africa. It's one of numerous works in the exhibition "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," now on show at the Wolfsburg Kunstmuseum.
The photograph is part of Hugo's series "Kin," which features pictures of his friends and family members, as well as other people from his homeland. He asked them what family and home means to them, while personally reflecting on the same question. How do people live in a society marked by decades of apartheid and oppression? How do people raise their children in a country torn by conflicts? These are the issues that are reflected in Hugo's work in which he successfully links the past with present through portraits, still lifes and landscape photography.
Pictures of outsiders and the marginalized
Filters shed a new light on the uniqueness of each person, as seen here with Mkhonzemi Welcome MakmaImage: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Hugo not only portrays friends and family members, but also scrap collectors, beggars, drug addicts, albinos and blind people: the outsiders and marginalized of society. As a white South African, he sees himself as an outsider, too. Moving across all social groups, he depicts social problems and the paradoxes of power structures. Raising people's awareness about social problems and contrasts, his photographs ask questions without giving answers.
Deersan in BeijingImage: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
Affected by his own country's history
Pieter Hugo was born in 1976 in Johannesburg. In 1994, South Africa transitioned from the former apartheid system into a democracy, while Rwanda was afflicted by genocide. It was an important year for the photographer: 18 years old at the time, he had just finished school and left his home. He started to work as a freelance photo journalist in Cape Town until he traveled to Rwanda in 2004. In his series "Vestiges of a Genocide," he documented the consequences of the genocide 10 years after it occurred.
Through the eyes of a child
Another 10 years later, he returned to Rwanda where he produced his series "1994," which portrays of Rwandese children. Through these photos, he explores how the post-genocide generation deals with the country's past. Hugo is fascinated by the children's lack of prejudice and their neutral view of things.
As Hugo wrote in the catalog of the current Wolfsburg exhibition, these children haven't been affected by the events to the same extent as their parents, and yet they are a burden on them. One photograph shows two boys in a field of flowers, seemingly peaceful surroundings, free of any "historical baggage," as Hugo puts it. But the children on these portraits, looking seriously and directly into the camera, don't come across as innocent children. Their glance rather transmits an accusation.
Clothing removed from genocide victims at Murambi Technical School, where around 50,000 people murdered during the Rwandan genocideImage: Pieter Hugo, Priska Pasquer, Cologne
International topics
Pieter Hugo doesn't limit himself to topics of the African continent. He has also worked in California and China with children and the elderly alike, as well as people of different social groups and of different professions.
He treats all people with the same degree of respect, whether his own family members, judges, homeless people, transsexuals or people with mental disorders.
He is interested in the blatant and hidden contrasts within a given society, as well as the conflict between tradition and modernity. That also inspired another one of his series, "Flat Noodle Soup Talk," produced during a stay in China. These photographs also deal with subcultures, people who don't fit into the "ideal" of a society: a half-nude homosexual couple, or a young girl in front of a blossoming cherry tree, which would appear completely clichéed if it weren't for the piercings in the girl's face.
No matter on which continent Pieter Hugo shoots his pictures, what they all have in common is that they uncover social conflicts and contrasts, thereby stimulating the viewers to think for themselves.
Pieter Hugo's exhibition "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" at the Wolfsburg Kunstmusem runs until July 23, 2017.
