Clinton Ibeto. Enugu, Nigeria, 2008, Ⓒ Pieter Hugo
Earlier this week, Amy Stein opened a debate as a result of an email she received in response to her post about the publication of
Pieter Hugo's latest work, 'Nollywood'. It's been bothering me, so I started trying to organise a reply, but it's now too big for a blog comment so I'm just going to out my thoughts here. To understand what the hell I'm wittering on about, you first have to read the specific blog post and following reactions -
link here.
It seems to me that Pieter Hugo has provided a opening context for the work of his under discussion, and it's elegantly and economically provided in its one word title - 'Nollywood'. At least, 'Nollywood' is more explicitly understandable (Hollywood, Bollywood, film industry) than the other project of his also drawing criticism, 'The Hyena & Other Men', which actually has similarities to 'Nollywood' because both bodies of work are about performers.
Why isn't 'Nollywood' - portraits of people re-enacting for the photographer aspects of the work they do in their film industry - firstly being considered a progression from 'The Hyena & Other Men' in the sense that Hugo has moved from documenting troubadours to actors? While I'm prepared to take into account hesitations and criticisms with regard to racial stereotyping both the above works might engender, what I really find hard to accept is that said might be so overpowering as to prevent any other form of appreciation. I didn't even know Nollywood existed before I first came across this work, and what the photos inspired in me (other than confirmed admiration for Mr Hugo's photography) is a desire to know more about filmmaking in Nigeria - or just more about anything to do with a place and people more complex and familiar than many other representations I've seen have tended to suggest.
A good place to start is Federica Angelucci's foreword to 'Nollywood' - extracts below.
"Nollywood is said to be the third largest film industry in the world, releasing onto the home video market approximately 1 000 movies each year. [...]
In Africa, Nollywood movies are a rare instance of self-representation in the mass media.
The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the mass media before. [...]
By asking a team of actors and assistants to recreate Nollywood myths and symbols as if they were on movie sets, Hugo initiated the creation of a verisimilar reality.
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. [...]"
If there's room for discussion about 'The Hyena & Other Men' and 'Nollywood', perhaps it's because both bodies of work are showing us aspects of African life that actually don't neatly fit existing (Western, colonialist) ideas about it. The imagery in 'Nollywood' is particularly rich with association, with multiple layers of meaning. There are hints of religious, military, economic and cultural colonialism, as themes of a popular genre of filmmaking - horror (and for anyone who thinks the zombie genre began with George A. Romero, it seems its likely origin is folklore of Niger-Congo (which is just next door to Nigeria) via Haiti and Louisiana) - not renowned anywhere for its sophistication but which, in 'Nollywood', is nuanced enough, through Hugo's collaborative portraits of its actors, to give pause for thought. As only the best photographs usually can.
Isn't a critique of Hugo's work, limited to a dismissal of it as a kind of freak show (and I quote: "weird, highly stylised, meticulously crafted images of crazy looking niggers doing crazy looking shit"), by extension a value judgement about the people in his photos also? By reading these images principally through the lens of issues we may have concerning race and dubious Western historical and cultural depictions of said, without factoring in considerations of the subjects themselves - i.e. the fact that they are professional performers, to name but one - isn't there the danger of being borderline, if not actually, patronising?
At least Pieter Hugo has the decency to identify by name all the principle portrait subjects in his images, rather than offensively 'N' word lump them into an homogenous black mass. He's also included in the series a picture of himself, in the same style as every other portrait in the set, wearing the scariest pants - dysentery brown! - I've ever seen on a man.
Pieter Hugo. Enugu, Nigeria, 2009, Ⓒ Pieter Hugo
Literacy - real literacy* - is not only the responsibility of an author. The interest and importance of debates like this concern the question of why we cannot see imagery of certain subjects, places and peoples - and particularly people's skin colours - without it narrowly mirroring back the prejudices, fears and value judgements of our own societies, rather than causing us to reflect on our ignorance of the real qualities, lives and alternative POVs of others.
Phew.
Next up, when/if I can manage it... Simon Norfolk, and Parrworld.
*The UNESCO definition of literacy is the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society."
