pieter hugo | Onelargeprawn

The last time we featured South African photographer Pieter Hugo, he was hanging out with the Gadawan Kura or ‘hyena handlers’, a group of minstrels who wander the towns of Nigeria, entertaining people and selling traditional medicines. It seems he has returned to Nigeria to explore yet another facet – the phenomenon that is Nollywood.

The film industry in Nigeria has become the second largest in the world, ahead of Hollywood and behind Bollywood. Shot on location all over Nigeria, a staggering 200 videos are released onto the home video market every month!

In Hugo’s latest series, he explores the Nigerian tradition of story-telling by asking a team of actors and assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets.

His vision of the film industry’s interpretation of the world results in a gallery of hallucinatory and unsettling images.

The tableaux of the series depict situations clearly surreal but that could be real on a set; furthermore, they are rooted in the local symbolic imaginary. The boundaries between documentary and fiction become very fluid, and we are left wondering whether our perceptions of the real world are indeed real.

Here’s a small gallery.

See more of Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood. [some content NSFW – exposed boobies & penises]

[via Between 1 0and 5]

Remember this photo? How could you not – it’s the black Mad Max with his bad-ass hyena. I knew it was from Nigeria but I didn’t know anything else, til now. The man is part of a group called Gadawan Kura or ‘hyena handlers’. These men were rumoured to be bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, and debt collectors. Myth had surrounded these men until South African photographer Pieter Hugo visited Abuja in 2005 to and seek them out.

The men, a little girl, three hyenas, four monkeys, and a few rock pythons made up a group of minstrels who wandered the towns of Nigeria, entertaining people and selling traditional medicines. Over the 8 days that he spent with the performers, Hugo took photos whenever an opportunity presented itself. He returned two years later to engage with the group again.

Here are some of this portraits.

The full story is available at Pieterhugo.com | More photos available in Pieter’s gallery.