Pieter Hugo

(South African, born 1976)

Pieter Hugo is a contemporary South African artist whose work addresses issues of class, identity, violence, and privilege with photography. Hugo uses photography to document marginalized and downtrodden groups in regions of Africa, including Nigerian hyena tamers, albinos, and children who survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide. His artistic voice is fueled by his awareness of vestigial Apartheid—his white privilege providing him the ability to produce contemporary photography, while prohibiting him from ever accessing the experience of black Africans. “A lot of my inspiration is reactionary to images I see in the media. The Hyena Men started with a picture that someone took on a cell phone,” the artist has said of his subject matter. “Apparently he was an employee of a mobile phone network in Nigeria and he photographed them from a car window. 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.” Born on October 29, 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Hugo first began work in the Cape Town film industry, before embarking on a career in art photography. The artist continues to live and work in Cape Town, South Africa. His works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.