Critical Evaluation OF Submitted Shots

Critical Evaluation OF Submitted Shots

The Submitted shots were all taken on Armistice day 2019. These images are depicting the power of the medals and who they are. 

I believe that these shots stand out because of the theme that they all follow with them being to show power and pride. The Images have got the subject the same distance away from the camera allowing the work to show consistency when looking at them so the viewer can get to see them up close. The shots were chosen after listening to the feedback from the critiques. I felt that this justified to everything that they were telling me to produce and submit these shots.

Even though the background does not look the same due to the lighting issues, I do not believe that this subtracts from the work. This is highlighted when some of the shots are featuring the cathedral and other shots are featuring bushes. Even though I was recommended to get the background looking perfect I am pleased that it is slightly of as it is meant to show what the subjects are all about and not what the area is about. 

With all of these images, they are all wearing medals which are important to the end outcome as the viewer will look at the first due to the location of shooting this. The medals are designed to capture the viewer's attention and to show they have all got power and that they are recognised for serving in the war.

With some of these images, they do not have the same lighting, this is because the light is off when it comes to looking at the images due to the way the sun is being shone on the subjects with some of them having a higher saturation than others due to this.  This does not take away the immense pride shown by some of the subjects as they can see they have severed this country and they are rewarded.

Out of the eight images that have been Submitted half of them feature the flag of the regiment in as the ones that have come out perfect were flag bearers, this made be interested and I want to highlight what regiment that they have served in.

The work has been done to be shown a portrait of Kent by the way they are shot and the location. This shows the best of the county of Kent and this is important when reading understanding it all.

How does this submitted Shots link to Pieter Hugo?

The submitted shots link with the way that Pieter Hugo Photographs because I have shown the link between the Hyena Men images and here. This shown by the use of power and pride that I have in the image because of the way that I have shot them. The links are shown by the way that it has been presented with my images having the medal and Pieter Hugo images having the animals this important to show the close links. The other link is with Nollywood with the word power and posing with the way they have been positioned to make them all look similar. My work has been done by Following Pieter Hugo and not directly copying him and this has done it justice.

Critical Evaluation, of Follow Me

Critical Evaluation, of Follow Me

In my own opinion, this part of Visual Research has been challenging and hard to understand. This put me in a place where I needed to learn more about Pieter Hugo and the way he thinks which made it hard for me to get in the mind of the photographer.

When I first began researching Pieter Hugo the photographer that Sam gave me it was hard to start with as his website did not exist with his work on there until December which meant that I had to go around other ways around it.  Even though I managed to get enough to make this work by using interviews that he has given to the Guardian, Vogue and the NewYorker and Vice. This allowed me to understand the intentions and the way that Pieter Hugo would work and allowed me to look deeper at his work so I can get a basic understanding of a couple of photographic series that he has undertaken.

Once I had done enough research that I thought could lead to a project I decided to ask Pieter Hugo questions, this was done with me asking myself what he says How I could Improve the work and what he recommended me to do. As I came up with ideas with some of this coming from what Sam, had told me. This was hard to understand as on first thinking it made believe that I would need to be drunk or on drugs to get this to work. But as I got into I began to point out what I thought needed to improve. It was a brave concept because you are telling yourself what you need to improve with the guidance from Sam, this helped organise more of me to lead me down the road.

To start with I had an idea that involved me going around Canterbury and Ashford Capturing peoples portraits with people Wearing hats, Graduation gowns and puffer jackets. The idea is to do something like Pieter Hugo did with the Hyena men but make it be like a portrait of Kent showing how we are more similar than we let on.  This idea was strong but it did quite not fit what Sam wanted me to do. As the Backgrounds were inconsistent and he felt that I could get the work looking stronger. I felt that I needed to find an understand and looking at a Quote in the Observer I felt that it stood out.

"My homeland is Africa, but I'm white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I'm African, they will almost certainly say no. I don't fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer." (O'Hagan, 2008)

This made think when getting backgrounds to make sure that the images could come together for this to stand out. The problem with this one was that I did not have a tripod so the images were uneven. So this meant the shots weren't as strong. Sam, recommend me to remove the background by blurring it out but this just made the image look strange and caused to act like someone has taken drugs. I wanted to make sure that my work looked similar to Pieter Hugo and I remembered what he did in the Hynea men with people of Power and I wanted to put that into practice.

Due to the time constraints, I Remembered that I had shot some veterans earlier in November for Armistice day. I changed the idea slightly too similar to what that he had done with the transgender work in the hood by air. With them showing power and courage as I believed the work stood out as it is similar to what Hugo has done. I think if I had more time I could shoot more of them to get the shots to look stronger.  I think the way this has come together stands out.

Overall, I think this project has been challenging and stressful but this has been rewarding in the outcome of the images that I have done. I think I could have gone more in detail about his projects and what he has done and how it links to mine. I am pleased with the end images as they show Who I am as a photographer having being inspired and following Pieter Hugo, this was the benefit for it. The end images are not plagiarizing him as they are done in my own style!

Conversation with Pieter Hugo

Conversation with Pieter Hugo

Nat: Morning, Pieter! I am a first-year student studying photography at Canterbury Christchurch University. My name is Nat Lowden, I am wondering if I can interview you to get some ideas about my current project. That you have inspired me to do.

Pieter: Nat, it would be an honour to do this interview, thank you for asking me.

Nat: I am trying to a photography project inspired by your Hynea & other men series, I am wondering if you had any ideas that could help me?

Pieter: That is a lovely idea when I was working on this series I needed to get close to the subjects to understand what they are all about. By doing this I became experienced in the way they live and work so you should get to understand them.

Nat: I am planning on doing a photo series the portrait of Kent similar that you have done with Nollywood highlighting what is going on in the area that we are not aware of or ignore. I am planning on shooting people wearing hats, military vets and people how are graduating.

Pieter: that sounds like that is going to be a great idea let me know how you get on.

Conversation with Pieter Hugo 2

Nat: sorry about the delay in getting back to you. I have had another busy week getting other projects done. I went down the high street and have got portraits with people wearing hats, puffer jackets. I have got them I am not sure about the theme. With them, not all of them flowing together. I have also shots some veterans at armistice day as well I am not sure how they will work together.

Pieter: I am currently working on the follow up to the Hynea men to see where they are now.

I am sad to hear that it is not following correctly together, I am pleased that you have asked random people. I Recommend that you know to review your idea and maybe try and shoot at a similar location to get it more consistent.

Nat: Thank you I will give it a try and I will let you know what it's like when I get back from shooting this I might go and shoot a series of people at the river where it will look similar.

Pieter: Good Luck, Let me know how you Progress.

Conversation with Pieter Hugo 3

Nat: Hello, How is the follow up to the Hynea men going?

I have followed the recommendation that you gave me about getting the background consitant, I have also edited the images in order to show more interest in the faces of the subjects.  I have attached the files for you to look at them.

Pieter: Thanks, the project is going well and is coming on slowly.

I have seen the photos I do not think that they work as the background is off on all of them and they do not work in harmony as they could do. Can you send me the Veterans images to me again so I can see them understand them even more?

Nat: I have just sent them.

Pieter: They are a lot stronger with them all carrying the same meaning of power. This works well as the composition is all balanced with the emphasis on the subjects. I think lowering the depth of field could work but in my opinion, they work how they are. Next time you do this make sure there is a lower depth of field.

Other than that I love the work and I would love to buy a print when you are all done.

Nat: thank you very much for this critique. I will take it on board for the future. I will let you know when you can buy a print.

Pieter Hugo: X Hood By Air, (2016)

Pieter Hugo: X Hood By Air, (2016)

Artist Statement

For this series – a collaboration with NYC clothing label Hood By Air and stylist Carlos Nazario – I travelled to Jamaica in early 2016 to shoot a series of provocative portraits featuring male porn stars and Gully Queens wearing select pieces from the brand’s archive. A community of gay and transgender youth living in Kingston, Jamaica, the Gully Queens have been violently forced from their homes and left with no other recourse but to seek refuge in a storm drain, or “gully,” beneath the city. Yet, despite such dire circumstances, this underground world is a sanctuary where individuals unwilling to compromise their identity can go to find shelter, the embrace of commonality, and the freedom to live differently.


This has been developed into a capsule collection called “Galvanize Jamaica”. Available to purchase from Hood By Air’s website, the collection features seven oversized tees printed with pictures from the book

Annotations

These project realities to him travailing around Jamaica photographing LGBTQ members to promote a line of clothing.

What is denoted?

The images showing models posing in clothing in Jamaica for the company hood by air.

What is Connoted? & How are you affected as a viewer? !!! 

The work communicates the style of clothing that the brand has on offer. The work has got the symbolism of them not being classed as ‘normal’ due to the sexuality of them all. The first thing that people will look on is the subjects due to them being presented to be the centre of attention. The work is important to understand this about clothing when people do not read into it as if they were to look at it in the newspaper as an advert. The image communicates different environments showing that the clothing can be worn anywhere at any time. The colour has been to show that they are also wanting to blend in with normal people with them being LGBTQ.

What makes this work significant to you (and or your project)?

I like that the work has got different locations where it is being shot at because it makes people understand that they can dress like that at any place. I am planning on taking the idea that he is working in different places but makes sure at every location that the composition does not change.

What are the strengths & weaknesses of what you’re looking at?

The Strengths of this work is that it stands out like saw thumb so people are more likely going to see this work in posters. I think the weakness is that the information about this project is poor and is harder to get an understanding of what the work is all about.

What ideas (or visual styles) will you take forward to think about in your work?

I am planning on taking forward that none of the subjects is shot against consistent backgrounds however they are all posed at the same distance from the camera. I am planning on taking forward the positioning and the message that is showing the way the subjects are all been positioned. The work stands out to be as it is something different than him just working in Africa.

Who is the intended audience?

The Intended audience is for people looking to by the clothing that Pieter Hugo is wanting to promote. The other audience is people are interested in the communities he is shooting to work as a documentary based project for others. This is a clothing advertisement job that Pieter Hugo shot.

What context have you seen the work in?

I have only seen this work on his website and online, this only allows me to see it from a digital preservative and is harder to get the magnetite of the power in the main photographers that he has worked.

Nollywood

Nollywood (2009)

Pieter Hugo Nollywood

Artist Statement (Hugo, 2019)

I became aware of Nigeria’s remarkable film industry while working on The Hyena & Other Men series. Everywhere I travelled, out of the corner of my eye, I would catch people watching these locally made films, in bars, hotel lobbies, anywhere there was a TV. The production values at the time were really poor, especially the sound quality, which may be why the films really irritated me at first. But then, at some point, I became more interested in the industry itself, which is the third-largest in the world after the United States and India. It wasn’t the economics of releasing between 500 and 1 000 movies each year that interested me so much as the cultural issues coded into a cinema made by local producers for local audiences. Here you have a local entertainment industry that enables massive self-representation through popular culture. I don’t want to overstate things: the Nigerian film industry dutifully produces a mix of banal, weird, interesting and occasionally profound films. What intrigued me was the authenticity at play, and, if you think through it some more, how this exercise of authenticity challenges western preconceptions of Africa.

With these big ideas in mind, I started off by photographing on film sets. It was an unproductive avenue. I wasn’t interested in making a documentary project showing the puppet strings – the film cameras, booms, microphones and countless operators behind the scenes. I was more interested in the cinematic ideas and stereotypes that were being fabricated for mass consumption. One evening I met a make-up artist who showed me his portfolio: photographs of actors in make-up. He worked in Enugu, which is much easier to work in than Lagos, and had many connections. We struck a deal whereby he would help me on my portrait series; the collaboration would be a showcase of his skills with make-up and wardrobe as much as mine with a camera.

The portraits were produced over four trips. The individual shots were no formal events on a movie set – I prefer to think of them as theatrical happenings that came together quite informally at times. Of course, I directed the final compositions – they were not spontaneous occurrences as such. I think it is important to recognise that my photographs offer a selective engagement with the ideas and visual culture of Nollywood. I chose not to engage the soap opera genre, which is big in Nigeria and typically set in upper-class houses. I had no interest in that. My taste is more towards the macabre; I loved horror movies as a child. There is still an element of that in the subterranean parts of my mind.

The arc of the project involved imagining a series of portrait subjects, making them up with actors, and then documenting these fictional subjects. In my development as an artist, this project was the first time I really questioned the veracity of the portrait. I became aware of how one can play with portraiture, that it can be much more than just the superficial depiction of a subject. For example, the portrait of the three enslaved women is easy to misread. But, factually, it is a photograph of three paid actors wearing costumes and chains. Working on this series, and later reading responses to it, I became more acutely aware of what the viewer brings to the image, which often exceeds what is depicted.

Annotations

This work is was done when Piter Hugo travelled around Africa and Shot film stars in the African film industry known as Nollywood which is Hollywood for African's.

What is denoted?

The work highlights actors and actress posing for Pieter Hugo,  the actors are from the African Film industry known as Nollywood.

What is Connoted?

The work communicates the emotion of laughter and happiness with them all being positioned to all look different and unique so the work can come together. My interpretation of the work is that he spent time to get to understand what the area is all about and how he can use this to his benefit.

How are you affected as a viewer?

On looking at the work it makes me laugh with the way they are all posed to the camera with the way they all dressed up. I think when looking at the book it makes you smile more when you get an understanding of what they are all about and how they can be worked to the viewer to make them stand out.

What makes this work significant to you (and or your project)?

The work is Significant to my Project Because of the style this all be photographed with it being at a set distance away from the subject. I like the way he has got a medium angle of view so he can use this to make the subject all stand out with them being a set distance away from the camera. I Like the idea of comedy in the work as it makes people laugh and have a smile on there face which I might take forward in the future.

What are the strengths of the source you are looking at? What are the weaknesses of the work? (How would you do things differently? What do you think can be improved?)

The strengths of this body of work are that it communicates what the industry that he is shooting in is all about and it can communicate emotion to the viewer. The weakness is that it was harder to understand what they are about without looking at the captions online. The work works well to promote the African Film industry of Nollywood.

What ideas (or visual styles) will you take forward to think about in your work?

My work is going to be different as I am not planning on taking forward the current work that he has produced because I am not going to Africa. I am going to fake forward the idea of the comedy and how I can have a series portrait and then make them stand out to the viewer.

Who is the intended audience?

The idea of this project is to highlight the idea of the African film industry and the audience is going to be people who want a deeper understanding of what the film industry is like in Africa. The work is contemporary with the way that Pieter Hugo has shot this and include the Nollywood confidential in the book that he has shown how it can look like when the work comes together. 

What context have you seen the work in?

I have only seen this work on his website and online, this only allows me to see it from a digital preservative and is harder to get the magnetite of the power in the main photographers that he has worked. I also have seen this work in the book about the project which gives the work greater understanding and making follow better than looking at the work online. 

Bibliography

Hugo, P., 2019. Nollywood. [Online]
Available at: https://pieterhugo.com/NOLLYWOOD
[Accessed 9 12 2019].

Hyena and Other Men

Hyena and Other Men

Artist Statement

THE HYENA AND OTHER MEN (2005—2007) (Hugo, 2019)

These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria, which depicted a group of men walking down the street with a hyena in chains. A few days later I saw the image reproduced in a South African newspaper with the caption ‘The Streets of Lagos’. Nigerian newspapers reported that these men were bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, debt collectors. Myths surrounded them. The image captivated me.

Through a journalist friend, I eventually tracked down a Nigerian reporter, Adetokunbo Abiola, who said that he knew the ‘Gadawan Kura’ as they are known in Hausa (a rough translation: ‘hyena handlers/guides’).

A few weeks later I was on a plane to Lagos. Abiola met me at the airport and together we took a bus to Benin City where the ‘hyena men’ had agreed to meet us. However, when we got there they had already departed for Abuja.

In Abuja we found them living on the periphery of the city in a shantytown – a group of men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys and a few rock pythons. It turned out that they were a group of itinerant minstrels, performers who used the animals to entertain crowds and sell traditional medicines. The animal handlers were all related to each other and were practising a tradition passed down from generation to generation. I spent eight days travelling with them.

The spectacle caused by this group walking down busy market streets was overwhelming. I tried photographing this but failed, perhaps because I wasn’t interested in their performances. I realised that what I found fascinating was the hybridisation of the urban and the wild, and the paradoxical relationship that the handlers have with their animals – sometimes doting and affectionate, sometimes brutal and cruel. I started looking for situations where these contrasting elements became apparent. I decided to concentrate on portraits. I would go for a walk with one of the performers, often just in the city streets, and, if the opportunity presented itself, take a photograph. We travelled around from city to city, often chartering public mini-buses.

I agreed to travel with the animal wranglers to Kanu in the northern part of the country. One of them set out to negotiate a fare with a taxi driver; everyone else, including myself and the hyenas, monkeys and rock pythons, hid in the bushes. When their companion signalled that he had agreed on a fare, the motley troupe of humans and animals leapt out from behind the bushes and jumped into the vehicle. The taxi driver was completely horrified. I sat upfront with a monkey and the driver. He drove like an absolute maniac. At one stage the monkey was terrified by his driving. It grabbed hold of my leg and stared into my eyes. I could see its fear.

Two years later I decided to go back to Nigeria. The project felt unresolved and I was ready to engage with the group again. I look back at the notebooks I had kept while with them. The words ‘dominance’, ‘codependence’ and ‘submission’ kept appearing. These pictures depict much more than an exotic group of travelling performers in West Africa. The motifs that linger are the fraught relationships we have with ourselves, with animals and with nature.

The second trip was very different. By this stage, there was a stronger personal relationship between myself and the group. We had remained in contact and they were keen to be photographed again. The images from this journey are less formal and more intimate.

The first series of pictures had caused varying reactions from people – inquisitiveness, disbelief and repulsion. People were fascinated by them, just as I had been by that first cellphone photograph. A director of a large security company in the USA contacted me, asking how to get in touch with the ‘hyena group’. He saw marketing potential: surely these men must use some type of herb to protect themselves against hyenas, baboons, dogs and snakes? He thought that security guards, soldiers and his own pocket could benefit from this medicine.

Many animal-rights groups also contacted me, wanting to intervene (however, the keepers have permits from the Nigerian government). When I asked Nigerians, ‘How do you feel about the way they treat animals?’, the question confused people. Their responses always involved issues of economic survival. Seldom did anyone express strong concern for the well-being of the creatures. Europeans invariably only ask about the welfare of the animals but this question misses the point. Instead, perhaps, we could ask why these performers need to catch wild animals to make a living. Or why they are economically marginalised. Or why Nigeria, the world’s sixth-largest exporter of oil, is in such a state of disarray.

Annotations

The work is from the series Hyena and other men, where Pieter Hugo Would travel around Africa looking for the performance artists.

What is denoted?

The series depicts men plating and being violent towards the Hyena’s, the work also shows monkeys as a permanence artist.

What is Connoted?

The work communicates the message of power with the way that they are all posing to make sure that the work stands out and links together when they are all posed. I think the way he has made them work together stands out to shock the viewer so it can show the message of dominance and make people think that they are debt collectors.

How are you affected as a viewer?

When looking at the work the viewer is drawn in my the way he has framed the animals to perform to the subjects and makes them stand out when it comes to power. The other way people will be affected is being annoyed by the way the animals are being treated with such force to the viewer and can be a problem, the power with all this works well to make the viewer understand what the life can be and how it looks like.

What makes this work significant to you (and or your project)?

I like the way he has used different backgrounds and locations to show that they are in more than one location, this will play into my end work as it shows that it looking the same will make the work look boring and makes it not work together and so this is not strong. I also adore the way that Hugo, has used different angles so that way it makes sure they stand out. I like the different composition angles with them not al, being the centre of the shot with some of them being on the right while some being on the left and some in the centre.

What are the strengths of the source you are looking at? What are the weaknesses of the work? (How would you do things differently? What do you think can be improved?)

The strengths of this work are that they all tell the story of power to show what the work is about and who they are all. I think a major strength is allowing them to pose naturally allowing the shots to look more organic and have more meaning when reading into the work. A weakness I think is that the work lacks empathy and this means that it is a one-sided story. This weakness can just be overcome by asking locals all about the Hyena and other men. This is my favourite project that Pieter Hugo has undertaken.

What ideas (or visual styles) will you take forward to think about in your work?

My work is not going to feature animals as I want my project to look slightly different. I am planning on making sure that the backgrounds aren’t all consistent as this will not be similar to this body of work. The other idea is that I am going to take forward is the notion of different angles and positioning to make sure that the portraits tell the story. This is the key work that I am in love with and I am going to try to do this justice and linking it together to make it a portrait of Kent.

Who is the intended audience?

The indented audience was to show people in Nigeria that the subjects are normal and that they are just actors. I think the work has been done with a contemporary theme to the work as this is not something most people have recreated before. I think this has also worked to build on his work on Nollywood.

What context have you seen the work in?

I have only seen this work on his website and online, this only allows me to see it from a digital preservative and is harder to get the magnetite of the power in the main photographers that he has worked.

Bibliography

Hugo, P., 2019. Hyena and Other Men. [Online]
Available at: https://pieterhugo.com/THE-HYENA-AND-OTHER-MEN
[Accessed 9 12 2019].

My Best Shot, Pieter Hugo

Pieter Hugo's best photograph: the hyena men of Nigeria

They would beat drums to draw a crowd. Then they’d take the muzzles off the hyenas and put their heads between their jaws’

Interview by Edward Siddons (Siddons, 2018), Thu 19 Jul 2018 

'There was something very strange going on, bordering on sadomasochism’ … the street performer and his hyena. (Hugo, 2007)

I first learned about Nigeria’s “hyena men” in 2005, thanks to a picture that had gone viral. The caption said they were debt collectors in Lagos. I knew I had to find them. The country has a population of 186 million people, though, so the odds were pretty low. But then in 2017, a journalist friend told me they come from his home town, Kano, in the north. Two weeks later, I was on my way.

The hyena men are itinerants: they never spend more than two days anywhere. I found them in a shantytown near Abuja, the capital. Despite the language barrier we got to know each other pretty quickly. Outside of Lagos and Port Harcourt, I didn’t see a single white person in Nigeria. So I probably seemed as odd to them as a guy walking a hyena in the street seemed to me.

We smoked some weed to break the ice. It turned out they weren’t debt collectors – they were more like town criers, traditional storytellers who performed in the streets and sold potions after their shows. It reminded me of stories I’d read about eastern European circus troupes in the 1930s – except instead of bears, these guys had hyenas, baboons and pythons.

Seeing them perform was unforgettable. It was a huge spectacle. They would beat drums to draw in the crowds, then take the muzzles off the hyenas. Next, they’d put their arms and even their heads between the animals’ jaws. The aim was to convince the audience they had special powers, and that the audience could acquire them too if they bought their potions.

The guys ​always ​had scratch marks everywhere from the baboons – they were always getting into fights with them

At first, I tried photographing the street shows, but there was just too much going on. Then I realised that the relationship between man and beast was more interesting than all the fireworks of the performance. There was something very strange going on between the guys and the hyenas, bordering on sadomasochism. These animals had been taken out of the wild as pups. They couldn’t return. They were entirely dependent on these guys for food. And these men were dependent on the animals for their livelihoods. They needed each other, but it wasn’t an easy symbiosis.

I didn’t have too much trouble with the hyenas. If you feed and water them, they’re cool, they’re happy. But the baboons were a lot more problematic. Baboons are just so close to humans. They have much more emotionally complex needs, I think. The guys had scratch marks everywhere from the baboons – they were always getting into fights. I don’t think the baboons were happy.

I love how confrontational this shot is. At no point did I tell him how to pose. It’s all him. He flexed his bicep, stared straight at me, while his hyena jumped all over him. Then in the background, there’s this kind of Mad Max landscape strewn with broken-down trucks, though you can hardly see them because of the light. It was harmattan season, a time between November and March when the sands of the Sahara blow over western Africa creating this murky, diffused lighting, which I love. It’s a simple shot with an incredible economy. I wish I could take more like it.

Pieter Hugo’s CV

Born: Johannesburg, South Africa, 1976
Studied: Self-taught.
Influences: “JM Coetzee, Claire Denis, Charlie Brown.”
High point: “My mid-career survey show at the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, in 2017.”
Low point: “Having all my equipment and film stolen after a two-month shooting trip in Nepal.”
Top tip: “Be vigilant. Be pure. Beware.”

Bibliography

Hugo, P., 2007. Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria. [Art] (From: The Hyena and Other Men).

Siddons, E., 2018. Pieter Hugo's best photograph: the hyena men of Nigeria. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jul/19/pieter-hugo-best-photograph
[Accessed 29 11 2019].

Pieter Hugo Mexico

PIETER HUGO’S NEW SERIES EXPLORES SEX AND DEATH IN MEXICO

OCTOBER 10, 2019
By Ted Stansfield (Stansfield, 2019)

South African photographer Pieter Hugo discusses his new body of work ‘La Cucaracha’, which is currently on show at Priska Pasquer in Cologne

Pieter Hugo is one of the most prolific outsider photographers working today. Born and still based in South Africa, he has spent his photographic career documenting individuals and communities living on the fringes of society. Producing much of his work on the African continent, he has focused his lens on the film industry in Nigeria (Nollywood, 2009); a rubbish dump in Ghana (Permanent Error, 2011); sites of mass executions in Rwanda (Vestiges of a Genocide, 2011); his own family and friends in South Africa (There’s a Place in Hell for Me & My Friends, 2011, and Kin, 2015); male adult film stars and Gully Queens in Jamaica (PH&HBA, 2016); and, perhaps most famously, hyena handlers also in Nigeria (The hyena & other men, 2007). Hugo has contributed to Another Man too, shooting in Morocco and Ibiza with Another Man’s fashion director Ellie Grace Cumming.

The sex worker, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018 (Hugo 2018)

This autumn, Hugo presents a new body of work titled La Cucaracha (‘The Cockroach’, which is a traditional Spanish folk song popular in Mexico), which explores ideas of sex and death in Mexico. Shot over a period of four trips, the series features a range of subjects – found through community theatre groups, Instagram and Grindr, among other places – and grapples with some of the contradictions that are present in modern-day Mexican life and culture, such as the gentleness of its people and the violence of its drug cartels. Raw, real, and profoundly beautiful, La Cucaracha was on show at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, and remains on display at Priska Pasquer, Cologne until November 23, 2019. Here, Hugo discusses the series in more detail.

Ted Stansfield: Can you tell us about this series?

Pieter Hugo: A couple of years ago, a curator from Mexico was putting together a big show of South African art in Oaxaca and invited me to come make work in dialogue with the exhibition. The exhibition was called Hacer Noche, which means ‘the crossing night’ and his only brief to me was that the work should be about sex and death. Which was great, because all work essentially deals with sex and death! I spent a month there making work. While I was there something shifted in my process; the way I make work, the way I look. It got its claws into me and I felt I needed to go back and continue the series. I went back four times and that’s where we are at now.

The snake charmer, Hermosillo, 2019 (Hugo 2019)

TS: What struck you about the country?

PH: Well it wasn’t so much about the country in this series. I don’t think the work needs to be read as a narrative – I’d prefer individual images that happen to be set in Mexico. Mexico has got this unique aesthetic and approach to mortality which I find very refreshing – there’s something celebratory in it. There’s also this acceptance that there’s more to life than what meets the eye. In the Trump/narco-state era, I’m curious about the normalisation of violence.

TS: Can you tell me about some of the people that you photographed, obviously it’s a very interesting mix. Do you have any particular favourites?

The lovers, Hermosillo, 2019 (Hugo 2019)

PH: I found a lot of the subjects through community theatre groups, photography schools, people on the sides of highways, friends of friends, Instagram, and Grindr. The pictures that I particularly like are ‘The Snake Charmer’, ‘The Lovers’, ‘The Advocate at Home’, ‘The Wedding Gift’, and ‘Black Friday’. This work really has a dialogue happening with visual history and literary history which has such close ties to magic realism but also with Mexican muralism. There’s a Mexican muralist movement which was a very socialist, almost bordering on a communist, form of art. You would have large-scale historical narratives depicted in one artwork. Which is very close to documentary storytelling traditions?

TS: You’ve said that your work focuses on outsiders. What is that?

PH: I think a lot of that is a continuous search to situate myself and photography enables me to do that.

TS: Do you think Mexico, in terms of what’s going on politically at the moment, counts as an outsider?

PH: Yeah I do, in the Trump era it’s definitely the ‘other’. The border becomes a negotiated space. It is a space lacking clear boundaries – moral and physical. It is a space that is both used by opportunists and by the desperate.

TS: There’s a lot more nudity in this series than other series you’ve done. Obviously your brief was sex and death, but was there any other reason you decided to do this?

PH: I think it’s because I’m approaching my mid-forties and finally feel comfortable in my own skin. So for the first time I feel comfortable making nudes, because of that. At the same time, as an artist you pose yourself riddles that you try and solve. Of course the nude has a long and complicated history in artistry. It’s a challenge to make a nude that does not fall into the male erotic gaze or that cliché. I guess that’s a preoccupation and I wanted to investigate this.

TS: So how would you describe your approach to the nude?

PH: Fabulous and confrontational.

TS: They’re definitely not sexualised though.

PH: I’m not interested in particular in nudes that one might consider fashionable or erotic. I’m interested in people’s bodies and in how the environment shaped it. Whether it’s scars or sun-tan lines. Just that relationship between how we shape our environment and how the environment shapes us. I’m interested in how our history imposes itself physically upon us. That’s something that I find quite compelling and piques my curiosity.

TS: Other images are quite violent – one features a body that’s on fire, another features a severed head. I am assuming that head isn’t real...?

The wedding gift, Juchitán de Zaragoza, 2018 (Hugo 2018)

PH: It’s a prop from a movie set but then at the same time if you google ‘narco murders’ you’ll see a barrage of extremely violent images of decapitated humans and mutilated bodies. This, of course, comes back to Mexico’s relationship with its dead. It’s very hard to reconcile the gentleness of the people you meet in Mexico and with the reality of parts of the country that are ruled or governed by a narco-state. At the same time, I think photographers are attracted to detritus and death like flies to shit. That’s also something I’m thinking about and interested in... 

TS: Have you come to any conclusions about why that is?

PH: I think everyone is attracted to it in some way. Look at what Hollywood puts out there – it’s all simulated sex and violence. When we drive past a terrible car accident we can’t stop ourselves from looking...

Bibliography

Hugo, P., 2018. The sex worker, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018. [Art].

Hugo, P., 2018. The wedding gift, Juchitán de Zaragoza,. [Art].

Hugo, P., 2019. The lovers, Hermosillo,. [Art].

Hugo, P., 2019. The snake charmer, Hermosillo. [Art].

Stansfield, T., 2019. PIETER HUGO’S NEW SERIES EXPLORES SEX AND DEATH IN MEXICO. [Online]
Available at: https://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/10974/pieter-hugo-la-cucaracha-sex-and-death-in-mexico-priska-pasquer
[Accessed 29 11 2019].

Pieter Hugo: Photography and Other Truths

Pieter Hugo: Photography and Other Truths

South Africa's Pieter Hugo on negotiating representations of Africa, the searing controversy surrounding his work, Nick Cave, and his friend the late Tim Hetherington.

By Noah Rabinowitz
May 15, 2012


All photographs © Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

South African Pieter Hugo’s striking photographs of contemporary Africa, infamously referenced by Beyoncé Knowles and Nick Cave’s Grinderman music videos, have garnered global recognition. His work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The FOAM Museum of Photography, and The Museum of Modern Art. With even a passing glance at this young artist’s curriculum vitae, his influence on contemporary art and photography is clear.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1976, Hugo is a self-taught documentary photographer. His images are created using a large format camera, a bulky piece of equipment that does not lend itself to the surreptitious photographer. His work hinges on personal interaction and connection with his subjects. “The power of photography is inherently voyeuristic,” he said in an interview with The Independent last year. “But I want that desire to look to be confronted.” And yet, he is “deeply suspicious of the power of photography.”

A question that many photojournalists and photo documentarians struggle to answer is whether a camera can capture truth. For Hugo, his work has brought to him “a type of ecstatic experience where one looks at the pictures and the truth of one experience, even if it’s not the truth of an account.”
In March, The Hague Museum of Photography became the first museum to exhibit a comprehensive survey of Hugo’s work from 2003 through 2011, entitled This Must Be The Place. (The show ends on May 20.)

Publisher Prestel-Munich produced a concurrent book, Pieter Hugo: This Must Be The Place, with essays by T.J. Demos and Aaron Schumann.

Together with many previously unseen photographs, the exhibition includes a curated selection of his six published books. The most well known of which, The Hyena & Other Men (2005-2007), documents a group of performers in Nigeria and Lagos who work with hyenas, baboons, and pythons. Hugo’s Nollywood (2008) a commentary on Africa’s film industry, is described by Michael Stevenson, curator of the Gallery Federica Angelucci, as “overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted.” Permanent Error (2011) studies a dump in Ghana where the obsession with gadget iterations—the tech industry’s “planned obsolescence”—is exposed in a narrative of global wastefulness. Although each of these evocative series asks us to reassess the perceptions of our world, Hugo’s Hague collection questions photography itself: its limits as well as its increasingly complex methods of representation.

The nature of Hugo’s subject matter has been criticized as sensational and exploitative of the “exotic other”—a criticism of documentary photography dating back to its inception. “My intentions are in no way malignant,” Hugo says, “yet somehow people pick it up in that way. I’ve travelled through Africa, I know it, but at the same time, I’m not really part of it… I can’t claim to [have] an authentic voice, but I can claim to have an honest one.”

I spoke with Peter over Skype, while he was in his home in Johannesburg and preparing for a trip to London.
—Noah Rabinowitz for Guernica

Guernica: There’s a quote in the text of your new book from John Szarkowski, the important former curator of photography at MoMA, stating that “A beginning photographer hopes to learn to use the medium to describe the truth. The intelligent journeyman has learned that there is not enough film to do that.” On several occasions, you’ve said: “photography is finished.” Can you talk about what you see as the medium’s limitations?
Pieter Hugo: Shoot. I think it’s important that it goes on the record that I made that statement when I was completely drunk.
Guernica: [Laughs] It is an interesting issue for a photographer to confront.
Pieter Hugo: At some stage after practising for a while, you’re going to become aware of your idealistic intentions in the beginning and the shortcomings of your work when it gets published. For example, your intentions and the way they are being read by a wider audience are different. I guess that’s really what it comes down to. At the same time, running parallel to that, photography has always been a struggle for me to take seriously as an art form. In the process of working in any medium, you become aware of its limitations. For me, it was realizing that photography could only describe the surface of things. It’s symbolic. It can’t do much more than that. It’s true, seduction lies with its foot in reality. It still has the pretence of being a quasi-document. It’s something literature figured out years ago, and it’s something photography realized quite recently.

Junior Ofokansi, Chetachi Ofokansi, Mpompo Ofokansi, Enugo, Nigeria, 2008 From the series Nollywood

Guernica: How do you decide what to pursue?
Pieter Hugo: A lot of my inspiration is reactionary to images I see in the media. The Hyena Men was a picture that someone took on a cell phone. Apparently, he was an employee of a mobile phone network in Nigeria and he photographed them from a car window. He posted it on the Internet saying “these are debt collectors from Nigeria.” The Nollywood series was made because while I was doing the hyena work, everywhere in West Africa—every hotel I went to, every bar I went to—people were watching these movies. At the time it really just annoyed me. It later became apparent that it was something quite amazing and worth exploring. Permanent Error started because I had read an article in National Geographic on global recycling and there was a photograph taken on a computer dumpsite. The Rwanda work came from an article I read in The Economist on a plane one day. It’s born from literary or media stimulation and then my reaction to it. It’s born out of something I see.Guernica: Let’s talk about your new book and exhibition, and how they came to be.
Pieter Hugo: I currently have a touring survey show that started in the Hague Fotomuseum—the show is curated by Wim van Sindarin and has work from 2003 onwards. There are over one hundred prints in the show and producing a catalogue for it seemed only natural. Then the catalogue became a book. The experience of putting it together was fantastic. I always have the feeling that I’m sitting around not doing anything with my life. A little Calvinist guilt that I should be more productive, but after producing this catalogue I realized that I can relax a little—I actually have been quite busy.

Vegetable garden at the Portuguese Club in Pretoria, 2011 From the series Kin (Hugo 2011)

Guernica: I’m sure it’s cathartic to put these things together and see themes arise. What kind of threads did you see while editing the work?

Pieter Hugo: This survey has been a good opportunity to sit down and look at what my work has been about—to see the different threads that have emerged, and to get a clearer sense of what my preoccupations have been throughout the last couple of years. After I finished school I went straight into becoming a photographer, I didn’t study. In my early twenties, I became a practising photographer, whether it was commercial work, editorial work, or working as a photojournalist. There really wasn’t space where one would get an education about the theory and history of photography. That was just something you learned along the way. There are a few major themes, of course, like “what is real?” I think that’s a big question my work poses. Secondly, it seems to provoke a lot of debate about the rights of representation.
Guernica: Your photographs seem to pose questions rather than answer them.
Pieter Hugo: I feel like I’ve developed a vocabulary. I feel articulate using that vocabulary, but I’m also getting bored with it. That work can become formulaic. I thought the exhibition and book came at a very good time. I’m fortunate it happened at this stage of my career as an artist. One can begin investigating new avenues and new ways of doing things.
Guernica: There are a lot of symbols or icons, clothing or costumes, in your portraits.
Pieter Hugo: Often that is just privy to make a photograph interesting.

Mohamed Bah, Monrovia, Liberia, 2006. From the series Boy Scouts

Guernica: The portraits of the Liberian boy scouts are quite interesting. Can you talk about these images?
Pieter Hugo: That’s a good example. That was really serendipitous because I was on assignment in Liberia to photograph Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—the first female African president—for an American magazine. I finished the shoot and decided to stay on in Liberia for a while, so I was having a beer on my hotel porch and these boy scouts walked past. It so happened that one of the boys was the son of the fixer I was working with. He explained to me that most of the boys were ex-combatants during the civil war. I guess if one is aware of what your preoccupations are, if you keep your eyes open, they’ll show themselves. It also made me realize that you don’t need to go to the jungles of the Congo to make interesting photographs. It can be around you. You just have to open your eyes to it.
Guernica: You graduated high school in 1994, the year the first democratic elections took place in South Africa. Can you talk about how that influences your work?
Pieter Hugo: I grew up in a middle to the upper-class house with fairly liberal sentiments, but to me, it was always very obvious that the society I grew up in was not ideal and needed to change. Since I was a kid it was apparent it was going to change. It wasn’t sustainable the way it was going on.
My work is deeply tied to my experience of growing up in South Africa. It’s very hard to separate that—as much as I’d like to think they are completely personal prerogatives, they are still tied up in the topography of the place I grew up in and the constant negotiation of that place. It’s a problematic place. One constantly questions where you fit into it, or don’t fit into it, or should you bother fitting into it. I guess photography, in the beginning, really gave me an excuse to go out and engage with that, which I think is what good photography is about. It comes down to an engagement with the world.
Guernica: How were photographers working before? What was the mission before, and is it different now?
Pieter Hugo: It’s completely different now. Not that long ago the idea of collecting photography in South Africa did not exist.
Guernica: So it was very functional?
Pieter Hugo: Very functional, although there have always been photographers doing work that wasn’t purely functional. There was a cultural boycott. One grew up never seeing fine art photography in museums. The work one saw in museums wasn’t international. If sports teams played in South Africa you were blacklisted around the world, international sports were boycotted during the period I grew up in. So it was really an isolated place, in a weird way. You were acutely aware that you were at the end of world and the rest of the world didn’t like you and didn’t approve of your political paradigm. So, I learned about photography through photojournalism.
Guernica: You can feel this in your work, but there is something distinctly different from your work and that of a news photographer. Why do you think that is?
Pieter Hugo: I don’t really operate within that call and beckon paradigm anymore and that really creates a different vocabulary. I do assignments, but the kinds I do are for The New York Times Magazine, where they really take time to let me explore something properly. It’s a very different type of journalism, like slow journalism, as opposed to the daily mull of a newspaper. It’s no disrespect, but it’s not particularly interesting to me, that world. I’m not suited to work in that world.
Guernica: I recently saw Beyonce’s “Run the World (Girls)” video. I can obviously see your photographs referenced, but I also see Ed Kashi‘s work and the visual language of a variety of photographers. Borrowing isn’t anything new, but to see the work taken for a glossy commercial purpose is a bit jarring. An homage? An appropriation?
Pieter Hugo: I honestly don’t give it that much thought. A part of me just thinks an original idea is like original sin. It happened a long time before you were born. I am indebted to so many people. I guess if you acknowledge it in some way or another, it’s OK.

Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Lagos, Nigeria, 2007 From the series The Hyena and Other Men

Guernica: As long as you’re not Richard Prince.
Pieter Hugo: Exactly. The Beyoncé thing I kind of laughed about, but when I saw the hyena men in the Nick Cave video I was pissed off, actually, because I would have loved to do that video. I’ve always been a big fan of Nick Cave.
Guernica: Others may disagree, but in the Nollywood work, I see some comedy.
Pieter Hugo: A lot of people have missed that element of it. It was my Tarantino. I wish more people would see that. But you know what is happening, there’s a lot of reaction to that work. There were particularly strong reactions. One of the Nigerian authors who worked with me on Nollywood had threats made against him for collaborating with me on this work. He was called a race traitor. It’s quite scary when academics start dictating to artists that they should be politically correct or follow certain rules of behaviour—which means we have to start making dishonest work, which means it becomes didactic and propaganda in nature. I find that very troublesome, very problematic. It’s taken me a long time to figure out why it affected me so deeply. It really upset me. It was never my intention in any way.

Chommy Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi Anwuacha, Enugu, Nigeria, 2008, From the series Nollywood

Guernica: How is the reaction, if you were to show the image to a Nigerian as opposed to a European or American?
Pieter Hugo: It depends. When you want to look at the Nollywood work and read it as an itinerary of the Nigerian film industry, of course, it’s inaccurate. But if you want to read it as, this is a creative person’s interpretation of the phenomena and has drawn inspiration from the aesthetics of the phenomena, and the audience’s reading of the phenomena, then critique the work on its own merits. Say, “they’re boring photographs where everyone seems to be placed in the middle of the frame.” But of course, I’m not an anthropologist. That’s not what my preoccupations are. I found those criticisms debilitating for a really long time. It took me a while to work through that. My experience with the vitriolic criticism that has come from that work made me very conscious of how damaging it can be to engage your work on that level and to try to dictate to people what they should or should not do or how they should or should not approach the subject matter. And of course, on another level it’s completely condescending, assuming custodianship of other people’s culture. There’s something incredibly patronizing in doing that. In Nigeria you are dealing with the third-largest film industry in the world; the majority of the people read newspapers every day. In a way, the critic is more racist and more condescending. The racist word, using racism to critique anyone, unless it’s completely overtly so, is a very dangerous thing to do. It’s not something that should be taken lightly or thrown around without careful consideration.

Pieter and Maryna Vermeulen with Timana Phosiwa, 2006 From the series Messina/Musina (Hugo 2006)

Guernica: Do you think it is your responsibility as a photographer to provide an interpretation of what you see?
Pieter Hugo: As an artist, it’s not my responsibility to provide a responsible rendition of how the rest of the world should perceive or not perceive Africa. Firstly, I’m not really concerned with Africa, I just happen to work here and it’s become an extension of my topography and the world that I inhabit. Continually ghettoizing it in that way is also very dangerous, or thinking of things as purely Africa, all you are doing is perpetuating this notion of otherness in some way.
Guernica: How is the approach of a photographer from Europe or America different? How do you see someone like Tim Hetherington‘s work?
Pieter Hugo: In many ways, I think Tim Hetherington was a much more dedicated photographer than I am to his themes. He lived in Liberia for years. I definitely wouldn’t have stuck it out there for that long. Tim had an interesting hybrid of preoccupations and influences that comes through in his work. He was quite unique in his own way. He wasn’t scared of experimenting and definitely wasn’t scared of taking the time to do so.
Guernica: You knew him well?
Pieter Hugo: He was a friend of mine. The day I photographed the boy scouts I went to his house. Tim was so happy moving to New York. He found it incredibly liberating. I think he was just one of those people who was an outsider, even in England. He found it frustrating that he went to very posh private schools, but his family had made money just recently. He always found himself to never quite fit in. That’s why he found America so liberating. You can move somewhere and reinvent yourself. We had a good dialogue around that issue: the experience of being an outsider. This is part of the process, of why I often need to go away to make work. It’s not so much that the theme is exotic. Rather, it awards me the isolation of not being distracted and allows me to get on with what I really want to look at.

Bibliography

Hugo, P., 2006. Mohamed Bah, Monrovia, Liberia,. [Art] (From Boy's Scouts).
 
Hugo, P., 2006. Pieter and Maryna Vermeulen with Timana Phosiwa. [Art] (From the series Messina/Musina ).
     
Hugo, P., 2007. Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Lagos, Nigeria,. [Art] (From the series The Hyena and Other Men ).
 
Hugo, P., 2008. Chommy Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi Anwuacha, Enugu, Nigeria,. [Art] (From Nollywood).
 
Hugo, P., 2008. Junior Ofokansi, Chetachi Ofokansi, Mpompo Ofokansi, Enugo, Nigeria,. [Art] (From NollyWood).
 
Hugo, P., 2011. Vegetable garden at the Portuguese Club in Pretoria. [Art] (From Kin).
 
Rabinowitz, N., 2012. Pieter Hugo: Photography and Other Truths. [Online]
Available at: https://www.guernicamag.com/photography-and-other-truths/
[Accessed 29 11 2019].