This Must Be the Place by Pieter Hugo

Sean O’Hagan writes in the Guardian about Pieter Hugo and reviews “This Must Be the Place” Pieter Hugo’s photographic retrospective offers a provocative view of life on the edge of sub-Saharan African society

“Pieter Hugo’s photographs are problematic. That is part of their power and their resonance. He is a white South African who came of age as apartheid crumbled and, though he cites the great David Goldblatt as a formative inspiration, his photographs possess none of the powerful political thrust of an older generation of South African photographers, who had no choice but to deal with the harsh realities of the world around them.”..…..MORE

This is from Pieter Hugo’s website and specifically about this project

“THE DOG’S MASTER

These photographs came about after a friend emailed me an image taken on a cellphone through a car window in Lagos, Nigeria, which depicted a group of men walking down the street with a hyena in chains. A few days later I saw the image reproduced in a South African newspaper with the caption ‘The Streets of Lagos’. Nigerian newspapers reported that these men were bank robbers, bodyguards, drug dealers, debt collectors. Myths surrounded them. The image captivated me.”..….MORE