Politics of the Strange
Revisiting Pieter Hugo’s Nollywood
Nomusa Makhubu
all photos by Pieter Hugo
… THERE ARE MANY NIGERIANS WHO HAVE REFUSED TO
BUY INTO THE CULTURE OF WATCHING NOLLYWOOD MOVIES
BECAUSE OF THE STRONG PRESENCE OR MOTIF OF “RITUAL
AND JUJU”…
(HOPE EGHAGHA 2007:71)
I
n a photographic essay accomplished between 2008 and
2009, South African photographer Pieter Hugo depicts
ambiguous images of “supernatural” characters in Nige-
ria’s Nollywood.1 The majority of these photographs
were taken in Enugu. Hugo’s Nollywood (2008/2009)
has been exhibited widely in South Africa and in Euro-
pean, Australian, and American cities such as Rome, London,
Paris, Amsterdam, Terragona, New York, Los Angeles, Sydney,
and Adelaide as well as Auckland, New Zealand. Each portrait
illustrates the grotesque in Nollywood. The cosmetic work for
this photographic series is attributed to Gabazzini Zuo, a Nolly-
wood actor and make-up artist.2 The “monstrous” in these por-
traits are framed so that they appear to have a sense of belonging
to the space they occupy, illustrating a strange coexistence with
those who seem ordinary. This approach raises some pertinent
questions regarding what the proliferation of juju or witchcraft
images may mean for the representation of Nollywood in gen-
eral. Central to some of the discussions surrounding these pho-
tographs is the prescribed impotence or powerlessness of the
“monstrous” and the ease with which Hugo’s constructions are
consonant in conventional social life. The “monsters” in this
series do not pose a threat; rather they appear “at home” in
Enugu, Nigeria. The key objective of this paper is to unpack the
ways in which this intriguing imagery can be prejudicial. Pho-
tographs are powerful objects whose content, whether truthful
or fictional, can influence how people and places are perceived.
50 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
Although Hugo’s photographs have been celebrated, they have
also been lambasted as a “misrepresentation” of Nollywood.3
Arguably, this rejection also alludes to a common denunciation
of Nollywood video film for “mis-representing ‘us’ as a ‘nation.’”4
The magico-religious elements that constitute representations of
the supernatural in Nollywood video-film are on one hand argued
to be a kind of retrogressive neo-primitivism5 and, on the other
hand, are seen as a means to decode social and cultural politics
(Meyer 2002, Haynes 2007). The occult, according to Haynes
(2007:144–45) “permeates all social environments in the world of
the videos, and while one can find examples where it is associated
with the primitive or village world, as opposed to urban moder-
nity […], more often it is integral to the representation of moder-
nity and modern wealth.” It is “a crucial function of the video
films” (ibid., p. 144). The significance of the occult in Nollywood
is widely acknowledged even though it has been solidly rejected as
an adulteration of established local cultural production.
CONFRONTING PIETER HUGO’S NOLLYWOOD
One image in the photographic series portrays a couple:
Chris Nkulo and Patience Umeh, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 1).
Patience, dressed in a striking green dress and extravagant head
wrap, crosses her hands and stares intently at the photographer.
She sits between her purse and the Baphomet-like Chris, whose
body is darkened and his eyes reddened. We recognize that he is
not innately a malevolent creature but is made to appear as such.
In addition to the gender difference, she is human, he is bestial.
Many attributes differentiate the two and render them strange to
each other. A boundary fence separates the two characters from
the community, circumscribing their space as if they are in tran-
sit or awaiting a journey. Patience’s head wrap begins to appear
as a reflection of Chris’s horns; his calm and nonthreatening

1 Chris Nkulo and Patience Umeh, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
facial expression seems to emulate and maintain Patience’s vir-
tuousness as his eyes become filled with the color of her purse.
They seem to transmit munificence and malevolence between
each other as if a magical mirror exists between them. It is this
relational link that confounds Pieter Hugo’s portrayal of Nolly-
wood’s fictional monsters.
While it can be argued that the interaction between human
and beast in this image can be interpreted as the appropriation
of the “Beauty and the Beast” standard, the effect is different. The
documentary character of photography which steers Hugo’s oeu-
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
vre removes these images from the world of fiction, myth, and
fairytale. Even the magico-religious aspect or juju in this pho-
tographic series (and sometimes in Nollywood video film) does
not appear as a myth in the distant past of a fictional world but
as actual, current events in a recognizable geographical loca-
tion. The image is denuded and, as such, can be interpreted as
a representation of Nollywood’s working conditions. Further-
more, rather than providing the names of fictional characters or
mythical subjects that the actors portray, Hugo uses the subject’s
real name. The image, according to the caption, is thus not about
the Devil/Baphomet and his queen but about Chris Nkulo and
Patience Umeh, for example.
VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts
| 51

(clockwise from top left)
2 Emeka Uzzi, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
3 John Dollar Emeka, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
4 Chika Onyejekwe, Junior Ofokansi, Thomas
Okafor, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
52 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
Often, names are the primary means of the cognisance and
apprehension of a body that is not ours. However, there are ambig-
uous titles in Hugo’s photographic series with names such as John
Dollar, Thank God, Song, Escort, Princess, and Do Somtin which
hint at the comical yet poignant scar of colonial unbecoming
names. With particular reference to the Yoruba in Nigeria,
a name is given power to individuate, place a person socially and give
him a historical reality, a birth name (oruko) comments on the cir-
cumstances surrounding his origins, a totem name (orile) fixes his
lineage and occupation, praise names (oriki) elaborate upon personal
attributes and accomplishments (Borgatti 1990:71).6
The use of real names in Hugo’s portraits suggests that Chris Nkulo
is what we see in the photograph (i.e. the Devil/Baphomet; the val-
ues associated with the Devil/Baphomet are transferred to the sub-
ject). The danger is that this leads to the assumption that portrayed
subjects are appearing in these photographs as themselves rather
than extraordinarily named characters in a fictional narrative.
Hugo’s images suggest that these creations are linked to a
community and to family structures. They appear to be going
about their daily routines, implying that they are not, at least to
the extent we imagine them to be, as foreign to the spaces they
occupy and insinuating that they are not as foreign to those
around them. It can further be argued that these photographs
suggest that there are procreative relations between the (fictional)
fantastic beings and the humans. In popular culture, horror films
have formed the general concept that fictional anthropomorphic
creatures exist without familial lineages; they are nature’s miscal-
culations, a scientist’s flawed construction, a child’s imagination
or a parody of a ruling institution. Commonly, (art) horror mon-
sters are not only marginal or external to social conventions but
also actively threaten the structures that contextualize belong-
ing. Art-horror is defined by Noël Carroll as “a counter-piece of
 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
‘natural horror’”7 and as the combination of fear and disgust in
response to a fictional monster8 (Carroll 1990:12). As Gregory
Benford (1994:16) observes, the phenomenon of (science) fiction (clockwise from top left)
was to destabilize “familiarity” and “to unsettle relations about 5 Linus Okereke, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
our position in the natural order … our sense of being at home
6 Ibegbu Natty, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
in the world.” The grotesque characters in Hugo’s Nollywood do
not seem to pose this threat within the given context. 7 Escort Kama, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
A disconcerting aspect in these portraits is the kind of proso-
popoeia, “the giving and taking away of faces, with face and
deface, figure, figuration and disfiguration” that surfaces (de Man
1984:75, original emphasis). The Nollywood series comprises
portraits that somehow evacuate the soul from the seemingly
inanimate physical body. In many examples, the characters are
defaced, masked, or appear possessed to such an extent that the
taciturn faces look synthetic, as if the physical bodies host souls
that are foreign to them. They lack what has been described by
Emmanuel Levinas as
the focal point of the relationship with the other, it is not only the
assemblage of a nose, a forehead, eyes, etc. ... [it] is all that ... but takes
on the meaning of a face through a new dimension it opens up in the
perception of a being ... it is “the irreducible mode in which a being
can present itself in its identity,” it is epiphany ... the sudden appear-
ance of the other as absolutely other, beyond possession, knowledge,
and representation, it establishes an ethical relation; it calls me into
question by calling me away from my indifference, from my life,
from everything that has been and is “mine” and ordering me to take
responsibility for the other (Stamelman 1993:121).

In the two images portraying Patience Umeh, Junior Ofo-

kansi, and Chidi Chukwukere (Fig. 10) as well as Chika Onyeje-
kwe, Junior Ofokansi, and Thomas Okafor (2009; Fig. 4) the face
is smeared into nonrecognition, that focal point denied. Both
images are family portraits depicting man, woman, and child. In
both photographs, the characters are dressed in soiled and tat-

VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts

| 53

8 Song lyke, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
9 Chigozie Nechi, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
10 Patience Umeh, Junior Ofokansi, Chidi
Chukwukere. Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
54 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
11 Linus Okereke, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
12 Fidelis Elenwa, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
13 Ngozi Oltiri, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
14 Mr Enblo, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
15 Junior Ofokansi, Chetachi Ofokansi,
Mpompo Ofokansi. Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
16 John Mark Asaba, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
 17 Kelechi Nwanyeali, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
18 Princess Adaobi, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
tered clothing. Furthermore, their bodies are covered in a sub-
stance that looks like a mixture of tar and ash. The characters
pose as if they would for a conventional family portrait. In the
image portraying Patience Umeh, Junior Ofokansi, and Chidi
Chukwukere, the characters are seated on a couch placed on the
veranda. However, the image of Chika Onyejekwe, Junior Ofo-
kansi, and Thomas Okafor depicts the characters posed around
a set of oil drums.9 In their appearance, the characters are burnt
and come across as the “living dead” or zombies (I will elaborate
on this point further at a later stage). In both images (and the
entire series), the characters look back at the viewer.
There are implications that the external spectator as a for-
eign subject becomes the object of scrutiny—arrested in a state
of awkward self-awareness and subjected to the piercing stare
that confronts him or her. The smeared faces, or rather the face-
lessness, of the portrayed thus emerge on the photographic
surface as blind10 or incapable of really looking (the eyes seem
prosthetic). In many instances, the individuals that we are look-
ing at are blocked from seeing, from the activity of looking in
which we engage. The muddy tarlike substance in examples such
as Chika Onyejekwe, Junior Ofokansi, Thomas Okafor, Enugu,
Nigeria (2009; Fig. 15), Linus Okereke, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig.
11) (who emerges from scrap-metal dump), and Song Iyke with
Onlookers, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 22) (posed with a group of
children around him)11 almost seals their eyelids. In other pho-
tographs of this series, masks cut off any real eye contact. For
example, the portrait of Fidelis Elenwa (2009; Fig. 12) demon-
strates the illusion that the individuals that are portrayed return
the viewer’s gaze. Elenwa poses with a whip in his hand in front
of two trucks. Looking closely at the image, Elenwa wears faux
spectacles, where the eyes are painted on the ocular shape below
the uncharacteristic feather headdress. Another example is the
portrait of Ngozi Oltiri (2009; Fig. 13) whose contemplation is
mystified by the two coins that seal her eyes. Oltiri, dressed in
blue, sits by a window as if in deep meditation. While it may
be argued that these depictions represent mystical or spiritual
rather than physical sight, there is still an element of impotence
with regards to the eye that looks back at the viewer. Consider-
ing this and the fact that the photographer’s seeing is also dis-
torted by the apparatus that stands in for his eye, the camera,
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
there is no real visual social acknowledgment between photogra-
pher, subject and viewer.
Susan Moeller (1989:15) argues that photography “masquerades
as human sight, its information is visual, but its manner of collect-
ing and imparting that information is radically different form the
totality of a human being’s sight.” Moeller views this as incapabil-
ity that “is partly compensated for by the viewer’s insertion of their
own sensual experience in the void left by the image’s inarticulate-
ness” (ibid., p. 16). This inability facilitates the estrangement of the
subject from the viewer. It also elicits Miles Orvell’s hypothesis of
the paradoxical experience of the camera. Orvell (1989:77) draws
from Oliver Wendell Holmes—designer of the stereoscope—to
argue that this experience appears to draw attention to “the real
thing” while it simultaneously “estrange[s] us from ourselves and
from reality, to compel our entrance into the aesthetic world of the
image.” Sight, and arguably the sensation that seeing elicits, can in
this instance be interpreted as prosthetic.
The disconnection created by the inability to “exchange looks”
forms a distance between the viewer and the photographed sub-
ject that is intensified as the latter metamorphoses into a different
species. This circumstance is arguably simultaneously destruc-
tive and reconstructive in that while it labors on difference, it
obscures the point at which recognizing the foreign within “us”
allows for the apprehension of the other. Recalling Julia Kristeva’s
(1991:1) observations that “strangely the foreigner lives within us:
he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our
abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder,”
the bridge of acknowledgment collapses. Kristeva aptly points
out that “the foreigner comes in when the consciousness of my
difference arises, and he disappears when we all acknowledge
ourselves as foreigners, unamenable to bonds and communities
… this symptom is that which precisely turns ‘we’ into a prob-
lem, perhaps makes it impossible” (ibid.). When confronted with
the ultimate “otherness” that is monstrous and grotesque we
cease to see its similarity with the otherness in ourselves.
Hugo renders some of his subjects not only faceless and/or blind
but also mute. In the introduction of the catalogue for Hugo’s Nol-
lywood Federica Angelucci asserts, with reference to Nollywood
(the film industry), that “[the] narrative is overdramatic, deprived
of happy endings, tragic … the aesthetic is loud, violent, exces-
VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts
| 55

sive; nothing is said, everything is shouted.”12 Hugo’s work does
not seem to represent a deafening loudness but rather the inabil-
ity to converse. While photography in relation to film inherently
carries a certain silence or inarticulateness, characters in Hugo’s
photographs seem to function outside of language. In his seminal
essay “The Body and the Archive,” Allan Sekula (1986:6) points
out an “instrumental potential in photography” as “a silence that
silences.” Beyond the photograph, those portrayed seem unable
to communicate and exhibit the incommunicable. Consider the
image of Princess Adaobi (2008; Fig. 15): a girl’s body is splayed
across the visual plane and an artificial hand is placed in her
mouth. The hand can be a metaphor for the extended tongue. The
replacement of the tongue by the hand appears less as the barbaric
purging of cannibal food but as the language she could not con-
tain, constrain, a handful of the horrid silence that kills her as it
exiles itself from her body. When uttered, she becomes perverse.
Or that because the hand appears dry, it is precisely the object that
silences and disfigures her.
While language connects individuals, it also configures a dis-
tancing difference, an abyss of misapprehension. For the for-
eigner, the language of the host incapacitates him/her because
it blurs points of reference. The foreigner stumbles over the lan-
guage of the host. Kristeva observes that
lacking the reigns of the maternal tongue, the foreigner who learns a
new language is capable of the most unforeseen audacities when using
it … for often the loquacious and “liberated” foreigner (in spite of his
accent and grammatical lapses he does not hear) stocks a ghostly world
with his second and secondary discourse. As in hallucination, his ver-
bal constructs—learned or shocking—are centred in a void, dissoci-
ated from both body and passions … the foreigner can utter all sorts
of indecencies without being shaken by any repugnance … since his
unconscious shelters itself on the other side of the border (1991:31).
The photographer maintains the ability to speak (for the work
and through captions) whereas the photographed appears eter-
nally “speech-less.” The photographed individuals seem to be
conduits transferring the visual language of the foreign photog-
56 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
19 Mkhonzemi Welcome Makma, Pietermaritzburg
(2005)
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
rapher. The language of the photographed in the images, even in
gestures, seems impotent or powerless.
In most of these photographs, those portrayed (includ-
ing Hugo)13 carry weapons. Hugo exchanges the camera for
the machete. Noticeably, the weapons in the Nollywood pho-
tographic series are carried almost feebly, without particular
threat, and at times they even appear as purposeless accesso-
ries, physical, limblike extensions of the “Other” who is con-
structed as inherently violent. The axe in Escort Kama, Enugu,
Nigeria (2008; Fig. 7) hangs loose in Escort’s hand, while his
pink mask reduces his face to the vacant billboard tower-
ing behind him. Song Iyke’s gun in Song Iyke with Onlookers,
Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 22) is merely an object for exhibi-
tion in the same way that guns furnish the arms of the women
dressed and posed like militia in the photograph Chommy
Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi Anwuacha, Enugu (2008;
Fig. 32). Omo Omeonu, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 23) depicts
a dwarf whose toylike sword seems to mock his physique.
Strangeness (or foreignness) has been aptly defined as “the
political facet of violence” (Kristeva 1991:46). While the inclu-
sion of weapons makes those that are portrayed appear as per-
petrators of violence, it also ambiguously casts them as victims.
They appear profoundly wounded. Even if we are aware that
the blood and scars are not real, we are reminded of deeper
psychologically transmuted, politically provoked and socially
aggravated wounds. Foreignness can be seen as a bandaged
wound of separation from familial structures.
Kristeva (1991:6–7) also points out that the foreigner—in this
instance, the photographer and the viewer—“is at the same time
quite ready to consider [the hosts] somewhat narrow-minded,
… for his scornful hosts lack the perspective he himself has in
order to see himself and to see them.” Further, she notes that
the foreigner feels strengthened by the distance that detaches him
from the others as it does from himself and gives him the lofty sense
not so much of holding the truth but of making it and himself rela-
tive while others fall victim to the ruts of monovalency ... in the eyes
 of the foreigner those who are not foreign have no life at all: barely
do they exist, haughty or mediocre, but out of the running and thus
almost already cadaverised (Kristeva 1991:7).
To use this metaphor and to return to my earlier point that the
characters come across as the “living dead” or necromantic zom-
bies, Hugo’s photographs can be seen as a form of necromancy.
The nature of the medium and the textual framing around these
works provide no fictional narrative that links and locates one
image to another and the individuals we are looking at. The char-
acters in the images appear as malingerers in a timeless space.
Hugo’s necromancy evolves into alchemy where bodies are
much like substance metamorphosing and transmuting through
putrefaction (nigredo in alchemy: blackening and corrup-
tion), individuation (albedo in alchemy: whitening and puri-
fication), unification of the bound with the boundless (rubedo
or reddening) and spiritualization (citrinitas or yellowing and
entitlement). Considering alchemical literature, nigredo or
blackness is also referred as a psychological state of dissolution
that through a process of self-reflection and purification is fol-
lowed albedo, then rubedo, which unifies the emanation of the
physical body with the mystical, and lastly the golden phase or
citrinitas, which symbolizes emancipation (von Franz 1980). The
photograph mentioned earlier of Patience Umeh, Junior Ofo-
kansi, Chidi Chukwukere, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 10), which
depicts a family seated on a couch whose bodies are smeared in
a black, tarlike substance, is a case in point. Their bodies appear
as if they are sweltering, corrosive, and actively dissolving their
clothes into red. Another example is the portrait of John Mark
Asaba, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 16) who is covered in a white
substance so that his body looks ashen and this grey-white sub-
stance melts oozes from his feet. Kelechi Nwanyeali, Enugu, Nige-
20 Pieter Hugo, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
21 Azuka Adindu, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
22 Song Iyke with onlookers, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
ria (2009; Fig. 17) depicts a boy reddened by streams of blood
ensuing from an invisible wound. He stands behind the bound-
ary of a fence that enmeshes the image and further distances
and alienates the subject. Alchemy is a process of transforming
substances to gold and this yellowing can arguably be referenced
to the portrait of Song lyke, Enugu, Nigeria (2008; Fig. 8) whose
face is painted a yellow metallic gold and his naked body is left in
its “natural” state.
The photographer’s presence is constantly felt. Hugo’s work
is a strange loop, a kind of self-referentiality or self-inscription
oscillating in a hierarchical structure to end up pointing back
at him.14 The camera ends up pointing back at the photogra-
pher. Included in this series is a photographic portrait of Hugo
(Fig. 20). It is an index to his very foreignness, his real presence,
his abrasion and partial blindness (in terms of the camera that
obscures eye). Like the monster fabricated in Hollywood, he
lurks at the threshold, “on the border dividing the prosaic every-
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
day from the threatening [mystical]” (Magistrale 2005:158). Hugo
portrays himself in many of his documentations of the margin-
alized in an attempt to include himself as part of the displaced
communities that are perceived as extraordinary. For example,
photographic essays such as Looking Aside (2003–6) which
is a series of close-up shots of people with albinism, as well as
There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2011) include self-
portraits rendered in the same way as the other portraits. This
way, it appears as if the photographer has the same “disability”
or “dis-figuration”. In Nollywood, he not only fashions himself as
part of a fantastical population, he also stands in as a reflection
of an image in the series that represents converse characteris-
tics. Wearing only his underpants and carrying a machete in this
image, Hugo is masked in a balaclava (which is also associated
with criminal intent, corruption and vice). In contrast, the por-
trait of Azuka Adindu (2008; Fig. 21) depicts the man dressed in
nothing more than a Darth Vader15 mask. Nothing of monstros-
ity is shown, only the strangeness in the stark public nakedness
of the man. By some contortion of the iconological history of
the sexualized body, Adindu’s penis is framed here as a thing of
monstrosity (not only by the material limit of the visual medium
but also by the tendency of the eye to develop a habit of looking
for strange grotesqueries in each portrait because, arguably, the
VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts
| 57

entire series trains the eye to dwell on the corruption of form).
The eye is directed towards areas of abstraction and amorphous-
ness. Furthermore, because the penis is framed this way in this
image, the hypersexualized meaning attributed to the penis dis-
places or dominates any other characteristic that could possibly
define the man that we are looking at. The Darth Vader mask,
meant to trivialize the notion of sexuality or defer and suspend
the symbolic reference to “the monstrous” from the penis, does
very little here; in fact it emphasizes the penis as monstrous and
transfers to it the connotations associated with Darth Vader’s
vice and treachery. Adindu is portrayed as a being that knows
no margin, a hybrid that knows no public or private, no dark
or light, no inside or outside, a thing of mere existence that is
bound by no moral fencing. Looking fixedly at the image or the
viewer’s absorption replicates the perversion of the photogra-
pher as ours, surveying those who do not see “us”: the temporary
occupants of the viewer’s fated position.
Hugo’s Nollywood series petitions the “virtuous” and allocates
entitlement to assert moral judgements. These images allude to
principles, be they grounded in religion, cultural tradition, or
political convictions, that warp comprehension between people
from different locations. This series depicts vice so that it shocks
the viewer but not the ordinary people around the monstrous
in the images, as if all who occupy this space, this location in
this country are decreed by malice. Hugo introduces Malachy
(Figs. 27–28), who is a martyr fashioned after the biblical Christ,
a sacrificial outcast posing with children as if taking a family
photograph. This weaving of Christian narrative alongside juju
or magico-religious aspects by Hugo is significant since it is the
hallmark of Nollywood productions. In the 1990s an Igbo busi-
nessman, Kenneth Nnebue, produced his inaugural Igbo-lan-
guage film entitled Living in Bondage (1992), invariably referred
to as the pioneering Nollywood film. In describing the film,
Jonathan Haynes states that it explores the “fascination with the
forms of extravagant wealth on display in Lagos; a psycho-spir-
itual analysis of the restless ambition provoked by that display;
attribution of such wealth to occult practices, especially money
rituals involving human sacrifice; and a resolution provided
by Christian exorcism” (Haynes 2007:291). These have become
58 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
23 Omo Omeonu, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
24 Rose Njoku, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
25 Major Okolo and Do Somtin, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
central themes in Nollywood productions. In eminent Nolly-
wood films such as I Hate My Village (1999), superstition and
the supernatural are posed as fatal threats to the seemingly pro-
gressive urban and Christian life. Hugo embroiders these themes
into his work. In theory, Hugo’s visual interpretation of this
aspect in Nollywood video film can be extended to the concept
of Africa as the “unconscious,” the “dark” mist that dissipates
into the unfamiliar. The ambiguity that obscures these percep-
tions is that Hugo consciously photographs this series in broad
daylight (except the photograph entitled Linus Okereke, Enugu,
Nigeria [2008; Fig. 11]), using natural light. The place is natural
but the people appear unnatural, aberrant and foreign.
Gabazzini Zuo’s portrait (Fig. 29) is reminiscent of the mode
of representation used in “African safari” trophy-hunting photo-
graphs, which have come to symbolize paternalism and unsym-
pathetic white dominance over the African landscape. Gabazzini
Zuo wears a formal suit and rests one bare foot on the bull that
lies dead in front of him. Rather than posing with a gun, he
is holding the innards of the animal as if he has just violently
ripped it open. Streams of blood flow from his eyes. There are
animal horns that lie scattered in the background. The “Afri-
can safari” hunter-explorer motif is generally associated with
white European and American game hunters who travel to game
reserves and private game lodges in African countries for this
activity.16 In this photograph, however, the “hunter” is repre-
sented as barbarous.
 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021

32 Chommy Choko Eli, Florence Owanta, Kelechi

26 Tarry King Ibuzo, Enugu, Nigeria (2008) Anwuacha. Enugu (2008)
29 Gabazzini Zuo, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
27 Malachy Udegbunam, Enugu, Nigeria (2008) 33 Emilia Ibeh, Doris Orji and Sharon Opiah (2008)
30 Thompson Asaba, Nigeria (2008)
28 Malachy Udegbunam with children, Enugu, 34 Izunna Onwe and Uju Mbamalu, Enugu, Nigeria
31 Dike Ngube and Gold Gabriel, Enugu, Nigeria
Nigeria (2008) (2008)
(2008)

VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts

| 59
 35 Maureen Obise, Enugu, Nigeria (2009)
36 Casmiar Onyenwe, Enugu, Nigeria (2008)
MONOPOLY OF HORROR (?)
It seems apt to provide a counter-argument at this point which
asserts that surely Pieter Hugo’s photographs are not harmful
or damaging in that they are more than a documentation of the
Nollywood film industry: they are works of art. There is creative
freedom which does not necessarily aim to make truth-claims
and consists of, to some extent, a form of jest. However, it is nec-
essary to point out that images are a site for political dynamics,
or as VoloŠinov (1973:23) puts it, “an arena of class struggle.” Dick
Hebdige (1993:364) argues that “all aspects of culture possess a
semiotic value, and the most taken-for-granted phenomena can
function as signs … these signs are, then, as opaque as the social
relations which produce them and which they represent.” The
photographs in Hugo’s Nollywood present to the viewer a set of
meanings while obscuring others.
What seems important at this point is not to ask for what pur-
pose (documentary or artistic) were the images made but how
are they interpreted in the cultural sphere as cultural objects.
Marx and Engels state that
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling class ideas, i.e.
the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time
its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material
production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production, so that generally speaking, the ideas of those
who lack the means of mental production are subject to it (1970:64).
The connotations of degeneracy, naiveté, appalling working and
living conditions, and corruption remain a prominent layer of
meaning. Due to the fact that these photographs are not framed
as images from a specific fictional film or there is no specific
information in the caption regarding the films these photo-
graphs are quoting, the viewer is left to make conclusions that
these meanings possess some kind of truth. The photograph
leaves space for universal truths which are, in this situation,
arguably injurious.
The ambiguities that surface in Hugo’s work distort the seem-
ingly safe danger of playful work: fiction and reality, familiar-
ity and foreignness, form and formlessness, named individuals
and generalized anonymity, actors playing themselves, the vio-
lence and vulnerability of those who appear as both perpetrators
60 | african arts SPRING 2013 VOL. 46, NO. 1
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
and victims, both dead and alive they become creatures of the
dark wedged in natural light, piercing us with eyes that do not
see, proliferating talk when words find a muffled destiny in the
throat. Accepting this imagery as mere fiction necessitates rec-
ognizing the tinge of pathological precarious misapprehension
that lies deep in the crevices of reality and threatens to coagulate
divisive fear.
Although I have not labored on the notion of race in this
visual analysis, it arises as a key concern in discussing dynam-
ics of power. The idea that Pieter Hugo, a white South African
photographer, travels to Nigeria to produce these images creates
another set of meanings that is based on a long history of Euro-
centric and Western cultural imperialism and white domination.
Hugo’s photographic essay seems to perpetuate “the dominant
ideological codes (i.e., racism, colonialism, sexism)” (Giroux
1993:1). Giroux calls this a “hyperventilating realism” which
“rearticulate[s] politics and difference into the stylized world of
aesthetics and consumption” (ibid. p. 6). It becomes a celebra-
tion of the image while affirming stereotypes at the same time.
For example, the stereotype that associates Nigerians with
witchcraft, vice, and corruption in South Africa also surfaces in
the film District 9 (2009). Produced in South Africa, District 9
depicts “aliens” who have migrated to Johannesburg townships in
South Africa. The physique of the “aliens” is based on a notori-
ous king cricket insect species called the “Parktown Prawn.” In the
film, they are tormented by Nigerians who eat them for juju and,
ultimately, power. The “alien” is depicted as more humane than
Nigerians. Generally in South Africa, migrants from other Afri-
can countries who are perceived as “menace” to society are inac-
curately labelled Nigerians. Prostitution and drug dealing in cities
such as Johannesburg and Cape Town is largely attributed to Nige-
rians. It is these kinds of cultural codes that need to be ruptured.
This paper does not seek to answer a question or to prove, via
a single visual analysis, the violence which these photographs
perpetrate. Rather, it aims to reopen a discussion on the visual
language which perpetuates prejudice and has developed, not
only in Hugo’s work but in contemporary cultural production.
Nomusa Makhubu is a lecturer in Art History and Visual Culture at
Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. n.makhubu@ru.ac.za
Notes
1 Please note that, in the article, I differentiate
between Nigeria’s Nollywood and Hugo’s Nollywood
because the latter is a series of still photographs rather
than films.
2 Zuo is also portrayed in Pieter Hugo’s photo-
graphic series. Gloria Ogwu, a Nollywood make-up
artist, is among those who pointed out that this work is
in fact widely recognized as Zuo’s style (interview, July
14, 2011).
3 Scriptwriter Isaac Anyaogu’s review in The Nige-
rian Voice describes the images as “a re-enactment of
Pieter’s nightmares.” http://www.thenigerianvoice.com/
nvmovie/19894/3/nollywood-through-pieter-hugos-
lens.html, accessed May 28, 2010.
4 From the International Workshop held at the
Kwara State University in Ilorin during 2010 under the
theme “Nollywood: A National Cinema?” whose brief-
ing blatantly states “If Nollywood is so ubiquitous in
the global marketplace of cultural commodities, there
is a need to discipline it so that it does not misrepresent
‘us’ as a ‘nation’. Its sloppy narrative regimes must be
disciplined.” This issue of placement, nationhood, and
cultural production is discussed at a later stage.
5 Referenced from a conference paper delivered
in 2011 at the University of Lagos. In this paper, entitled
“Re-reading Nollywood: Neo-Primitivism and Tunde
Kelani’s Quasi-Movie,” Awonsanmi questionably clas-
sifies some Nollywood films as “quasi-movies” whose
“technological banality and mis-representational neo-
primitivism projects Nollywood as an artistic parody
of Nigeria’s globally distressful crippled-giantness.” For
Awonsanmi, only a few productions negate “home-
video’s prevailing anti-aesthetic preoccupation with
ideologically misguided esotericism through which a
national culture is often derogatively primitivized.”
6 Nollywood films are generally referred to as
Igbo films. However, Jonathan Haynes (2007:286)
points out that the industry began with artists from the
Yorùbá traveling theater who produced celluloid films
in the 1970s and 1980s. The Yorùbá traveling theater,
also referred to as Alarinjo, emerged out of Egungun
groups that were meant to “cleanse Yorùbá communities
from physical and psychological disorders.” Performers
used grotesque masks that represent “physical, psychic,
and social aberrations [such] as leprosy, goitre, club
foot, small-pox, drunkenness, insanity, and prostitu-
tion” (Kerr 1995:12). Some of these performances also
include hunchbacks, albinos, and dwarfs.
7 The notion of natural horror is not thoroughly
explored as the composite of art-horror in Carroll’s text.
Peter French and Michelle Saint argue that art-horror is
rather a mixture of fear and impotence rather than fear
and disgust.
8 Noël Carroll (1990:27) bases his definition of
“art-horror” on a structure of emotions instilled in the
audience through a heuristic device (which could be any
fictional monstrous being) that is physically threatening.
9 The choice of oil drums in this photograph can
be interpreted as a comment on the political economy
of oil in Nigeria juxtaposed with depravity and penury.
10 Photography seems to disable this visual con-
nection between the eyes that look at the photograph
and those that look back.
11 Although the children in this particular photo-
graph Song Iyke with Onlookers, Enugu, Nigeria (2008;
Fig. 22) have no make-up or have nothing smeared on
their faces, their gazes also come across as impotent.
They do not look at Song Iyke as a strange creature;
rather they look back unthreateningly at the viewer as if
awed by the presence of the photographer.
12 www.pieterhugo.com/nollywood, accessed
November 16, 2012.
13 In his oeuvre, Pieter Hugo always includes a pho-
tograph of himself. I will discuss this aspect at a later stage.
14 The term “self-referentiality” is used here in the
Bakhtinian sense (1981) as a form of self-parody. Other
uses also appear in a variety of sources including Hof-
stadter (1978) and Ogbechie (2010).
15 Darth Vader is a tragic character in Star Wars,
a slave boy who becomes a combination of synthetic
and organic as well as artificial and organic systems, a
quintessential villain.
16 Herman Wittenberg (2004) examines contem-
porary tourism in African game lodges.
References cited
Bakhtin, M.M. 1981. The Dialogical Imagination,.ed. M.
Holquist, trans. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Benford, G. 1994. “Real Science, Imaginary Worlds.”
In The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF, ed.
D.G. Hartwell and K. Cramer, pp. 15–23. New York: Tor.
Borgatti, J., R. Brilliant, and A. Wardwell. 1990. Likeness
and Beyond: Portraits from Africa and the World. New
York: Center for African Art.
Carroll, N. 1990. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes
of the Heart. New York: Routledge.
de Man, P. 1984. “Autobiography as De-Facement.” In
The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Eghagha, H. 2007. “Magical Realism and the ‘Power’ of
Nollywood Home Video Films.” Film International 5
(4):71–76.
Giroux, H.A. 1993. “Consuming Social Change: The
‘United Colors of Benetton.’” Cultural Critique 26:5–32.
Haynes, J. 2007. “Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nol-
lywood Films.” Africa Today 131–50.
Hebdige, D. 1993. “From Culture to Hegemony.” In The
Cultural Studies Reader, ed. S. During, pp. 357–67. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Hofstadter, D. 1978. I Am a Strange Loop. New York:
Perseus Books.
Kerr, D. 1995. African Popular Theatre: From Pre-colonial
Times to the Present Day. London: J. Currey.
Kristeva, J., and L.S. Roudiez. 1991. Strangers to Our-
selves. New York: Columbia University Press.
Magistrale, T. 2005. Abject Terrors: Surveying the Mod-
ern and Postmodern Horror Film. Place: Peter Lang.
Marx, K., and Engels, F. 1970. The German Ideology, Vol.
1. New York: International Publishers. Work originally
published 1932.
Meyer, B. 2002. “Occult Forces on Screen: Representa-
tion and the Danger of Mimesis in Popular Ghanaian
Films.” Etnofoor 15 (1/2):212–21.
Moeller, S. 1989. Shooting War: Photography and the
Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/afar/article-pdf/46/1/50/1816371/afar_a_00044.pdf by guest on 24 March 2021
American Experience of Combat. California: Basic Books.
Ogbechie, S. 2010. “The Curator as Culture Broker.”
http://aachronym.blogspot.com/2010/06/curator-as-cul-
ture-broker-critique-of.html, accessed February 25, 2012.
Orvell, M. 1989. The Real Thing: Imitation and Authen-
ticity in American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press.
Saint, M., and P. French. 2010. “The Horror of Weep-
ing Angels.” In Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on
the Inside, ed. C. Louis and P. Smithka, pp. 297–312.
Chicago: Carus.
Sekula, A. 1986. “The Body and the Archive.” October
39:3–64.
Stamelman, R. 1993. “The Strangeness of the Other and
the Otherness of the Stranger: Edmond Jabès.” Yale
French Studies: Post/Colonial Conditions: Exiles, Migra-
tions, and Nomadisms 82 (1):118–34.
VoloŠinov, V. N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of
Language, trans. L. Matejka and I.R. Titunik. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
von Franz, M.-L. 1980. Alchemy: An Introduction to the
Symbolism and the Psychology. Place: Inner City Books.
Wittenberg H. 2004. The Sublime, Imperialism and the
African Landscape. Unpublished dissertation, Place.
Films
Living in Bondage. 1992. Dir. Chris Obi Rapu, screenplay
Kenneth Nnebue. Nigeria.
I Hate My Village. 1999. Dir. Callistus Ikebatah. Nigeria:
Liberty Films.
District 9. 2009. Dir. Neill Blomkamp. South Africa.
VOL. 46, NO. 1 SPRING 2013 african arts
| 61