Background information
South African photographer Pieter HUGO has garnered critical acclaim for his series of portraits and landscapes, each of which explores a facet of his native South Africa and neighboring African countries, including the film sets of Nigeria's 'Nollywood'; toxic garbage dumps in Ghana ('Permanent Error'); sites of mass executions in Rwanda; as well as albinos, the 'Hyena Men' of Nigeria, honey collectors and garbage scavengers. Writer John Mahoney characterizes South African photographer Pieter HUGO's book of photographs 'Kin,' a collection of images taken throughout South Africa in the early years of the new millennium, as the artist's first major work to focus exclusively on his personal experiences in his native South Africa, a place marked by centuries of political, cultural and racial tensions and contradictions. Pieter HUGO describes his series as 'an exploration of the failure of the South African colonial experiment and my sense of being colonial driftwood'. South Africa is such a broken, schizophrenic, wounded and problematic place ... How does one take responsibility for history and in what ways should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society?'
Content
Pieter HUGO's photo volume 'KIN' attempts to address these questions and reflect on the nature of contradictory personal and collective narratives. In addition to the photographer's statement, 'KIN' includes a short story by Ben Okri." (freely translated, © Aperture, 2015)
About the South African photographer, Pieter HUGO (b. 1976, in Cape Town)
Photo books by Pieter HUGO
- Photographer(s)
- Pieter HUGO
- Ed(s)/Author(s)
- Ben Okri (ed.), John Mahoney (text)
- Format
- HC, 30,5 x 24 x 2 cm., 164 pp., color ills.
- Language(s)
- English
- Year of Release
- 2015
- Publisher
- Aperture Publisher, USA