In Solus Volume I, South African photographer Pieter Hugo (born 1976) reflects on the values implied by the fashion industry’s shifting aesthetics through portraits of street-cast models found in diverse locations such as London, Paris, New York and South Africa. Hugo found himself captivated by sitters with unconventional and atypical looks, particularly before they underwent the machinations of wardrobe, makeup and hair. Drawn to this uniqueness and recalling the sense of not-belonging that is part of the intense experience of youth, Hugo’s invitation to the models was: “simply present yourself.” The resulting photographs embrace vulnerability and frailty as much as they do the agency and idealism of their subjects. Hugo’s typological study questions fashion’s commodification of youth and the “outsider,” while embracing the beauty of peculiarity worn with acute awareness and the paradox of craving both difference and conformity.
Published by RM. Text by Pieter Hugo, Mario Bellatin, Ashraf Jamal.
This is Cape Town–based photographer Pieter Hugo’s (born 1976) homage to Mexico, in portraits, landscapes and still-life vignettes with bright shades of pink, blue and green.
Pieter Hugo (born 1976) 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; sites of mass executions in Rwanda; as well as albinos, the Hyena Men of Nigeria, honey collectors and garbage scavengers. Kin, a collection of images shot throughout South Africa over the past decade, focuses instead on the photographer's family, his community and himself. Writer John Mahoney characterizes it as the artist's first major work to focus exclusively on his personal experience in his native South Africa, a place defined by centuries of political, cultural and racial tensions and contradictions. Hugo describes his series as "an engagement with the failure of the South African colonial experiment and my sense of being 'colonial driftwood.' South Africa is such a fractured, schizophrenic, wounded and problematic place ... How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society?" This work attempts to address these questions and reflect on the nature of conflicting personal and collective narratives.
PUBLISHER Aperture
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 11.75 x 9.25 in. / 164 pgs / 80 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 2/24/2015 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION Contact Publisher Catalog:
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781597113014TRADE List Price: $75.00 CAD $90.00
Pieter Hugo: La Cucaracha
Pieter Hugo: Kin