#pieter hugo
The hyena and other men, Pieter Hugo
The men’s acknowledgement of the camera suggests a degree of agency in the production of the images, but it also underscores the fact that the hyenas are not performing and are not capable of doing so in the same sense. Although they share the space of the photograph and receive equal billing in the titles, a deep rift divides the two species of subject. The men take a theatrical stance, acknowledging the artifice of the portrait and the presence of the viewer. The hyenas, on the other hand, are completely absorbed, unaware of the camera and its functions. The photographs are racked with a tension emerging from the split between absorption and theatricality and that between the animal and the man.
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Pieter Hugo (South African, born 1976), Burning bush, Oaxaca de Juárez, 2018
From the series La Cucaracha | © Pieter Hugo
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