Pieter Hugo:La Cucaracha

Pieter Hugo’s work focuses on photographing marginalised communities and those on the periphery of society. Comprising portraiture and landscapes his work examines social and cultural traditions as well as a history of place. Working in series, Hugo has primarily photographed in South Africa and on the African continent, exploring contemporary life, issues of colonisation and the relation of tradition and modernity. He has also travelled extensively, producing series in the United States, China, and most recently, Mexico.

Hugo was born in Johannesburg in 1976. Hugo has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg, the Hague Museum of Photography, Netherlands, Fotografiska, Stockholm, the Ludwig Museum, Budapest and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane. He has participated in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Barbican Art Gallery, London, Tate Modern, London and the Sao Paulo Biennale. Hugo received the Discovery Award at the Recontres d’Arles Festival and the KLM Paul Huf Award in 2008, the Seydou Keita Award at the Recontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2012. In 2015, he was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet and was chosen as the ‘In Focus’ artist for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Hugo’s work is held in the permanent collections at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and Huis Marseille, France.

He lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.