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The Journey
Pieter Hugo
Artwork 2014
Artwork: Pieter Hugo, The Journey (2014). Photogravure. 36 images; 28 x 38.5 cm each. Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson.
Artist Pieter Hugo Title The Journey Date 2014 Materials Photogravure Dimensions 36 images; 28 x 38.5 cm each Credit Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson

“My eye is drawn,” the photographer Pieter Hugo writes, “to the peripheral, particularly in Africa, and I negotiate contexts where the cultural nuances of our time are amplified.” Mediating the representation of marginalised people – in Africa and elsewhere – Hugo is attuned to the voyeurism of photography and its claims to realism. “I am of a generation that approaches photography,” he says, “with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything.” In all his photographs, his subjects participate in making their image. Hugo works with a large-format camera, which requires a setting up of the image, a conversation with his subject, necessitates time spent. As such, his photographs are never covert, never spontaneous, but made with the deliberate care the medium demands. Hugo’s photographic essays have included such various subjects as Liberian boy scouts, people with albinism, Nollywood actors, and Mexican muxe.

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