Nollywood by Pieter Hugo @ Michael Stevenson

Pieter Hugo tem vindo a mostrar aqueles seres que todos gostaríamos de ignorar, que não existissem. Mantendo o seu olhar que é único, traz-nos uma série bem menos desconfortável.

Pieter Hugo
Nollywood

2008

In his new body of work, Pieter Hugo explores the multilayered reality of the Nigerian film industry. Nollywood is, surprisingly, the third largest film industry in the world, releasing onto the market between 500 and 1 000 movies each year.

Nollywood produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation in Africa. The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted.

Hugo has been increasingly intrigued, in his travels through West Africa, by this hyperactive industry, in constant production despite tight budgets and strict production schedules. Over time he compiled a list of the iconic images and scenes that had attracted his attention, and he imagined photographing in these settings.

His first attempt to photograph on film sets documenting these scenes failed to produce pictures that fully mirrored the intensity of the situations. He then decided to bring his interpretation of these staged realities into another realm by assembling a team of forty actors and assistants. He asked them to recreate the stereotypical myths and symbols that characterise Nollywood productions, reproducing the dynamic of movie sets.

The tableaux of the series confront us with a verisimilar world: the situations are clearly surreal but they could be real on a set; furthermore, they are rooted in the local symbolic imaginary. The boundaries between documentary and fiction become very fluid, and we are left wondering whether our perceptions of the real world are indeed real.in http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/hugo/nollywood_index.htm

Pieter Hugo @Arles

Pieter Hugo has won the Discovery Award at this year's Rencontres d'Arles festival in the south of France.

He collects EUR25,000 for his exhibition of the 'Hyena Men' of Nigeria and wild honey collectors in Ghana, which is showing alongside 14 other 'discoveries' at the festival until 14 September. He was selected by Elisabeth Biondi, who is the visuals editor at The New Yorker.
The hyena men come from one extended family and live on the outskirts of Nigerian society, moving from city to city and performing acts with hyenas, monkeys and snakes to entertain their audience and sell traditional medicines. 'It's bizarre,' Hugo told BJP earlier this year (BJP, 14 May). 'The animals become semi-domesticated, dependent on the men.'
In the second series, the honey collectors are shown dressed in cassava branches and plastic, used to protect them from stings as they smoke out forest bees.
Hugo was named this year's winner at one of the nightly projections during at the festival.

in http://www.bjp-online.com/public/showPage.html?page=805887

Pieter Hugo - Rwanda 2004:Vestiges of a genocide