Pieter Hugo was born in Johannesburg in 1976, growing up in apartheid South Africa. He turned 19 in 1994, the year in which legislated apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela came to power.
His career has focussed on photographing those on the periphery of society. His series include The Hyena and Other Men (2007), which portrays a troupe of animal charmers in northern Nigeria; accompanied by their hyenas, rock pythons and baboons; Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide (2011) which revisited sites of tragedy in Rwanda ten years after the mass executions; Permanent Error (2011) depicts Agbogbloshie, a landfill site for technological waste on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital city, where Hugo produced a series of arresting portraits of workers among the broken computers, mobile phones and other international technological scrap that is slowly transforming into noxious waste, threatening the health of the area’s inhabitants and the workers who make their living on the site; Kin (2014) which is a series in which Hugo focuses on his personal experience of his native South Africa, a country defined by political and racial tensions and contradictions, 1994 (2016) which depicts a generation of children, born in 1994 in South Africa and Rwanda, growing up in a post-revolutionary era, and La Cucaracha (2019) that explores death, sexuality and spirituality in Mexico.
Hugo received the Discovery Award at the Recontres d’Arles Festival and the KLM Paul Huf Award in 2008, the Seydou Keita Award at the Recontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2012. In 2015 he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet and was chosen as the ‘In Focus’ artist for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Selected ExhibitionsBetween the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund, Germany
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg, Germany
Pieter Hugo, Thirteen Works, Gallery of Photography, Dublin, Ireland
In Focus: Pieter Hugo, as part of the 2015 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, UK
Kin, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, France
In Focus: Pieter Hugo, as part of the 2015 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibition, National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
This Must Be the Place, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary
This Must Be the Place, Fotografiska Museum, Stockholm, Sweden
There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends, Rencontres d’Arles Festival, Arles, France
This Must Be the Place, The Hague Museum of Photography, the Netherlands
This Must Be the Place, Musée de I’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
Nollywood, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, France
Nollywood, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia
The Hyena and Other Men, Photographic Centre Peri, Turku, Finland
On Reality and Other Stories, Forest Centre Culturel, BRASS, Brussels, Belgium
On Reality and Other Stories, Le Château d’Eau, Toulouse, France
The Hyena and Other Men, Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel
Nollywood, Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney, Australia
The Hyena and Other Men, Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Portraits, Fotogallery, Cardiff, Wales
Portraits, Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, England
Messina/ Musina, Standard Bank Young Artist 2009 exhibition, Monument Gallery, Grahamstown
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Museum, Port Elizabeth
Durban Art Gallery, Durban
Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein
Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg
Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
First prize, PDN Photo Annual Award, USA
Shortlisted for Prix Pictet, Geneva, Switzerland
Shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, London, UK
Seydou Keita Award, 9th Recontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial, Mali
FOTOGRAFIA – The Road to Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy
Young Director Award, Cannes Lions Festival, France
Discovery Award, Rencontres d’Arles Festival, France
KLM Paul Huf Award, Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, South Africa
First prize, Portraits section, World Press Photo, the Netherlands
Getty Images Young Photographer Award, USA