Pieter Hugo's 'Être présent' at Rencontres d'Arles Explores Portraiture on the Margins

The 52nd Rencontres de la photographie d'Arles features a solo exhibition of South African photographer Pieter Hugo, titled 'Être présent,' at the Palais de l'Archevêché, running until September 26, 2021. The show, part of the Africa 2020 season, brings together around a hundred works spanning two decades of Hugo's portrait practice. Hugo focuses on marginalized individuals—homeless people in California, residents of Mexico, blind and albino South Africans, and those with atypical appearances. His series 'Solus' (2020) features young people from England, America, France, and Africa cast by a modeling agency for their distinctive looks, photographed without makeup in a raw style. Another series captures sleeping airplane passengers using infrared light, which Hugo associates with warfare, creating a panoptic effect where subjects are unaware they are being watched. Hugo's work also includes intimate portraits of his family in South Africa, addressing the country's fractured history. The exhibition emphasizes Hugo's frontal, bust-length compositions on neutral backgrounds, challenging notions of truth and uniformity while reflecting on photography's role in surveillance and criminology.