The Guardian’s Sean O’Hagan interviews Cape Town photographer Pieter Hugo. For O’Hagan, Hugo’s photos present “Africa as you’ve never seen it.” Hugo has been photographing everything from poor whites in South African border towns, hyena handlers in Nigeria, famworkers in Ghana, albinos, boy scouts, and football supporters with animal masks. Though a larger group of talented young South African-based photographers have emerged recently–most notably Lolo Veleko, Ingrid Masondo, Keorapetse Mosimane, Dorothy Kreutzfeldt, and Zanele Muholi–Hugo and another young photographer Mikhael Subotsky get the bulk of the attention outside South Africa. As usual in interviews with British news media, Hugo’s identity comes up:
“My homeland is Africa, but I’m white,’ he says. ‘I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I’m African, they will almost certainly say no. I don’t fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer.’
You can see samples of Hugo’s work here.
Hugo is now working on a series of photographs about Nollywood.
