archival pigment inks on 100% cotton rag paper

Artwork date: 2005
Signature details: signed, dated, numbered 1/5 and inscribed with the title in pencil along the bottom margin
Exhibited: FOAM Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Hyena & Other Men, 5 September to 2 November 2008, another example from the edition exhibited. Les Rencontres D’Arles Photography, Arles, 13 July to 14 September 2008, another example from the edition exhibited. Yossi Milo Gallery, New York, The Hyena and Other Men, 29 November 2007 to 10 January 2008, another example from the edition exhibited. Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, Pieter Hugo ‘Gadawan Kura’ – The Hyena Men series 1, 2005, another example from the edition exhibited.
Literature: Abiola, A. and Hugo, P. (2007). The Hyena and Other Men. Munich: Prestel, an example of this image illustrated in colour on the cover and within, unpaginated.

(1)

sheet size: 112 x 110 cm

Michael Stevenson Contemporary, Cape Town.

Notes:

Few contemporary photographic series are as widely recognisable as the works from Pieter Hugo’s ‘Gadawan Kura’– The Hyena and Other Men I and II. Of all the photographs from this famous series, this is perhaps the best-known and most regarded, as it was selected as the cover image for the Prestel book The Hyena and Other Men, first published in 2007.Since it first burst into public imagination with a debut at Michael Stevenson Cape Town in 2005, we have been captivated by and sought to understand the seemingly impossible relationship between man and beast evidenced in these images.The history of the series has taken on a mythology nearly as legendary as the images themselves: Hugo first learned of the itinerant performers from an online cell phone image snapped from a car window, that mislabeled the animal handlers as ‘debt-collectors’. Local Nigerian journalist Adetokunbo Abiola, who wrote the essay for the book of the series, worked to clarify the identities and locations of the troupe, which is part of the Hausa community. Hugo travelled to Nigeria in both 2005 and 2007 and was faced with the seemingly impossible task of locating the itinerant group which operates on the geographic and legal peripheries of Nigeria’s major cities, within a vast country of nearly 200 million people.After initially planning to photograph the public spectacle of the performance, Hugo’s focus rather became more personal, more intimate: the most compelling story was the seemingly contradictory connection between the animals and their handlers, of which Hugo says: “[it] was more interesting than all the fireworks of the performance. There was something very strange going on between the guys and the hyenas, bordering on sadomasochism. These animals had been taken out of the wild as pups. They couldn’t return. They were entirely dependent on these guys for food. And these men were dependent on the animals for their livelihoods. They needed each other, but it wasn’t an easy symbiosis.While much has been written about the Hyena Men series, the images themselves resist easy interpretation. They offer instead a window into a delicate and complicated balance of power between man and beast.

Kathryn Del Boccio

Sources:

^[1] Pieter Hugo interviewed by Edward Siddons (2018). ‘Pieter Hugo's best photograph: the hyena men of Nigeria’, The Guardian, 19 July Available at: https://https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/jul/19/pieter-hugo-best-photograph. Accessed 26 April 2019.