Luis Matanisa, Capetown, 2013

Aperture is pleased to release this very special limited-edition photograph by Pieter Hugo on the occasion of the publication of his book, Kin (Aperture, 2015).

Hugo has garnered critical acclaim for his series of portraits and landscapes, each of which explores a facet of his native South Africa and neighboring African countries, including the film sets of Nigeria & Nollywood, toxic garbage dumps in Ghana, and sites of mass executions in Rwanda, as well as albinos, the Hyena Men of Nigeria, honey collectors, and garbage scavengers.

Kin, a collection of images shot in Hugo's native country over the past decade, focuses instead on the photographer's family, his community, and himself. Writer John Mahoney characterizes it as the artist's first major work to focus exclusively on his personal experience in his native South Africa, a place defined by centuries of political, cultural, and racial tensions and contradictions. Hugo describes his series as "an engagement with the failure of the South African colonial experiment and my sense of being colonial driftwood. South Africa is such a fractured, schizophrenic, wounded, and problematic place. How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent should one try? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society?" This work attempts to address these questions and reflect on the nature of conflicting personal and collective narratives.

Digital C-Print
Edition of 20 and 2 Artist’s Proofs
Paper Size: 20 x 24 inches
Image Size: 15 x 19 15/16 inches
Signed by the artist

Pieter Hugo (b. 1976 Johannesburg, South Africa) has published eight volumes of his work, including There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2012), Permanent Error (2011), and The Hyena and Other Men (2007). He is the winner of numerous awards, including in 2008 the KLM Paul Huf Award and the Discovery Award at Rencontres des Arles. He won the Seydou Keita Award at the ninth Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial, Mali, in 2011, and was short-listed for the 2012 Deutsche Bourse Photography Prize.