Nollywood

The strange world of the Nigerian movie-making industry - dubbed 'Nollywood' - is the source of the subjects in Pieter Hugo's fascinating photographic series. Hugo's images are not so much documentary photographs but rather a series of portrait-like recreations of the kinds of stereotypical characters that populate Nollywood productions: mummies, demons, zombies and so forth.

In a continent with a rich tradition of storytelling through oral and written fiction, extension of this into the mass media has, until recently, been scarce. Nollywood movies are thus described as a rare instance of African self-representation in the mass media. Releasing hundreds of low-budget movies each year for a primarily African audience, Nollywood rivals Bollywood and exceeds Hollywood in sheer output, with production characterised by improvised processes: rudimentary scripts, actors cast on the day of shooting, low cost equipment and 'real life' settings. It is not unusual for a movie to be produced and marketed in a week.

Exploring a realm where myth, movie and reality intertwine, Pieter Hugo's Nollywood characters are casually posed by actors in the back-lots of the Nigerian cities of Enugu and Asaba, yet the images are so strikingly composed and photographed that each one has an iconic, almost talismanic power. The result is an unsettling yet enthralling play between the real and the fantastic.

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