In January, Pieter Hugo‘s latest series of photographs, Nollywood, debuted at Capetown’s Michael Stevenson Gallery. Hugo initially attempted to shoot the series on actual film sets, depicting his subject (Nigerian cinema) in its natural surroundings, but later decided to shoot the actors out of context as he believed that his original photos  “failed to capture the intensity of the situations.”

The end product is a complex and engaging series of photographs that juxtaposes Nollywood stereotypes upon documentary reality. Equal parts entertainment, commentary and slight of hand, Hugo plays off our imagined constructs of Sub-Saharan Africa by presenting an image of Nigeria to us through the visual language of its cinema; mystical, sexual, decrepit, riotous and violent. Where Hugo succeeds is in how he blurs our understanding of African reality – making it seem as if the photographs could be from the trenches of the latest genocide or famine.

While the most disturbing aspect of the series is their resemblance to recent press photos, I think overall the very nature of Nigerian cinema – its lo-fi grittiness and emphasis on production rather than technology – is hugely inspiring. Nigerians are making the movies they want with the resources they have and are saying  fuck it to the whole idea of “production standards”, and have in the process built a wildly popular film industry from the ground up – an accomplishment very few nations can boast.

“I matriculated at the end of apartheid, and the photographs I grew up looking at were directly political in that they attempted to reveal, or change, what was happening. Back then, the lines were clear. You tried to tell the world what was going on with your photographs. It’s much more complex now. I am of a generation that approaches photography with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything.” -Pieter Hugo