Africa as Freak Show ~ Pieter Hugo

Mallam Galadima Ahmadu with Jamis, Nigeria.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

At The Guardian you can find this slideshow and this story on South African photographer Pieter Hugo. I have been wondering about his work for a while now but have been uncertain what I think. So, here you go:

Much of Hugo's work seem to me fairly unexceptional - more or less standard portraits albeit some of albinos or members of various Christian sects. Those that stand out, like the one I've lifted here, seem to me to portray Africa as a freak show - men and boys posing with baboons dressed in human clothes or huge, slouching hyenas on leashes. Is he trying to recreate the exotic? Is he trying to portray menace? Is he establishing a continuum between the local fauna in Africa and its human inhabitants? Beats me.

Sure, we need to see Africa as much more than as series of civil wars, refugee camps, famines, epidemics and droughts. I could not agree more [1] [2]. The alternative, however, is hardly just to present the continent as an open-air circus. Hugo has won a bunch of awards. And in The Guardian piece "Elisabeth Biondi, visuals editor of the New Yorker magazine and one of the most influential taste-makers in modern photography," is liberally quoted singing his praises. Count me among the skeptics though. Biondi exaggerates by way more than half.

From the Corners of Africa

At The Guardian, I discovered a story by Sean O'Hagan that usefully links to nearly a handful of photographers from across Africa - Adolphus Opara and Andrew Esiebo (Nigeria),  Michael Tsegaye (Ethiopia),  and Daniel Naude (South Africa).  Of these photographers I am familiar only with Esiebo; I've posted here on his work a couple of times. The work is uniformly impressive not only in its variety but in the way it departs both from the too common tendency to present of the entire continent as a disaster zone and from the temptation to depict Africa as a freak show. A good example of a photographer who, it seems to me, tacks back and forth between those unfortunate approaches is Pieter Hugo.

Pieter Hugo

On route to Kigali International Airport, Kigali, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Gatwaro Stadium, Genocide site, Kibuye, Rwanda.
Photograph © Pieter Hugo.

Some years ago I wrote this not-terribly-enthusiastic post comment on South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his work. Earlier in the fall seemed to be getting a fair share of quite positive exposure - from Sean O'Hagan here at The Guardian, for instance, or here at The New York Times Magazine - so I thought I'd see if it might do to reconsider. Hugo has done two major projects recently. One, Permanent Error, documents the environmental and human disaster of a massive dump outside of Accra, Ghana. The second, Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide, focuses on just what the title suggests. I suppose there is nothing wrong with either of the two undertakings. Permanent Error seems fairly derivative - I think of Edward Burtynsky's images of computer salvage in the Chinese countryside or of Salgado's images of impoverished scavengers at massive dumps across the developing world. The same might be said of at least parts of the "vestiges" project - think of Nachtwey or Peress or Salgado. But there are some images of Rwanda that are strikingly provocative. These depict the Rwandan countryside, mostly now tangled overgrowth, all seemingly banal, where atrocities took place.

In the end, I have not updated terribly much. Hugo seems more able to resist the 'Africa as freak show' thrust of his earlier work. But he has now turned instead - with only mixed 'success' - to 'Africa as disaster zone.' (Note: in many respects the other photographers I mention above might be accused of falling prey to a similar pre-occupation.) He clearly is a talented photographer. But he is caught in the tropes that dominate photography of the African continent. I wonder if he might some day break out from those constraints. That, in my mind, would warrant some of the superlatives that rain down around him now.