Press Release
Yossi Milo Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Pieter Hugo,
entitled Nollywood.
Pieter Hugo’s series Nollywood portrays archetypal characters from one of the three largest
film industries in the world, “Nollywood” in Nigeria (which is larger than Hollywood and second
to Bollywood, according to 2009 UNESCO report). Nollywood produces over 1000 low-budget,
straight-to-video films a year. The films lean toward the macabre and melodramatic,
with narratives rooted in local symbolic imagery and traditional storytelling.
Themes and subjects often include the supernatural, with plots centered on romance,
extortion, prostitution, witchcraft, or religion. Produced for a primarily African audience,
the films are a rare example of African self-representation in mass media.
The photographs in the series were taken with a medium-format camera in the film
production centers of Enugu and Asaba in southern Nigeria, using local actors to
recreate scenes and characters inspired by typical Nollywood films. The staged
images, which recall film production stills, are the artist’s interpretations of the
iconic myths and symbols that characterize Nollywood movies. Like the artist’s
series The Hyena and Other Men, which was shown at the gallery in 2007,
Nollywood focuses on a unique cultural community in Africa. The resulting
images are portraits on the border between documentary and fiction.
Website : www.yossimilo.com
Credit : © Pieter Hugo, courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
