Pieter Hugo

Escort Kama, Enugu, Nigeria
Digital C-Print
from the series Nollywood
2008

Friday 12 June to Saturday 11 July 2009
Tue - Fri: 12.00 - 7.00pm, Sat & Sun 10.00am - 6.00pm

Gallery 1

The Nigerian film industry is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1000 movies every year. Low budget, violent and excessive, most Nollywood productions take just 10 days to make, yet they are wildly popular in the lucrative African VCD market - an average film sells 50,000 copies. Nollywood movies now outsell Hollywood films in Nigeria and many other African countries.

For this series of images, Pieter Hugo collaborated with Nollywood actors to recreate the stereotypical scenarios that characterise their productions. His assortment of characters includes mummies, satanic demons and decomposing corpses, casually posing in the studio backlots of Enugu. With an eye for the absurd, he pays tribute to a unique industry that has stood up to the giants of the entertainment industry and come out on top.

Accompanying this exhibition will be a selection of Nollywood movie trailers in Gallery 2. Images courtesy of Michael Stevenson, Cape Town and Yossi Milo, New York