Vice Magazine has posted an interesting interview with South African documentary photographer Pieter Hugo.
Vice Magazine has posted an interesting interview with South African documentary photographer Pieter Hugo. Although Pieter is still relatively young, he is already well established in the photography world, and is on his way to becoming a South African legend along the same ranks as David Goldblatt and Guy Tillim. It’s great to read about his approach to photography and his thoughts on attribution and originality. Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
VICE: How do you decide what to pursue?
Pieter Hugo: 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. Apparently he was an employee of a mobile phone network in Nigeria and he photographed them from a car window. He posted it on the internet, saying, “These are debt collectors from Nigeria.” 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. At the time it really just annoyed me. It later became apparent that it was something quite amazing and worth exploring. Permanent Error started because I had read an article in National Geographic on global recycling and there was a photograph of a computer dumpsite. The Rwanda work came from an article I read in the Economist on a plane one day. It’s born from literary or media stimulation, out of something I see.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Via Kate Atkinson.
