{"product_id":"this-must-be-the-place-pieter-hugo-2012","title":"This Must Be The Place — Pieter Hugo, 2012","description":"\u003cp data-start=\"113\" data-end=\"774\"\u003eA mid-career retrospective in book form, \u003cem data-start=\"154\" data-end=\"178\"\u003eThis Must Be The Place\u003c\/em\u003e surveys nearly a decade of Pieter Hugo’s photographic work across the African continent and beyond—from his early portraits in Nigeria’s Nollywood sets and Ghana’s techno scrapyards, to the still, unsettling frames of Rwandan genocide memorials and suburban South African interiors. Published on the occasion of his major 2012 exhibition at the Hague Museum of Photography and Musée de l’Elysée, the volume functions as both monograph and archive—a tightly edited body of images that trace Hugo’s evolving interest in postcolonial identity, theatricality, and the fragile architectures of power.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"776\" data-end=\"1280\"\u003eThe cover image, a formal portrait of The Honourable Justice Unity Dow seated in full judicial regalia, sets the tone: this is Hugo at his sharpest—restaging colonial visual codes while revealing their contemporary resonance. Across the book, Hugo's signature frontality and saturated palette create a slow-burning tension between subject and setting. His images neither celebrate nor accuse. Instead, they maintain a precise, emotionally ambivalent distance that invites the viewer to sit in discomfort.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1282\" data-end=\"1855\"\u003eThe book’s sequencing resists chronology in favour of affective proximity. A Liberian boy in face paint appears after a street performer in Lagos, followed by a quiet domestic portrait in Cape Town. This deliberate juxtaposition—of violence and banality, tradition and hyper-modernity—makes the book feel less like a survey and more like an index of contradictions. Hugo belongs in the lineage of Goldblatt and Dijkstra, but this book affirms his unique position: not as a documentarian of \"Africa\" but as an artist obsessed with its entanglements, illusions, and surfaces.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp data-start=\"1857\" data-end=\"2211\"\u003eTechnical Sheet\u003cbr data-start=\"1872\" data-end=\"1875\"\u003eTitle: This Must Be The Place\u003cbr data-start=\"1904\" data-end=\"1907\"\u003eArtist \/ Author: Pieter Hugo\u003cbr data-start=\"1935\" data-end=\"1938\"\u003eDate: 2012\u003cbr data-start=\"1948\" data-end=\"1951\"\u003eTechnique \/ Printing Method: Offset\u003cbr data-start=\"1986\" data-end=\"1989\"\u003eMedium \/ Materials: Hardcover with dust jacket\u003cbr data-start=\"2035\" data-end=\"2038\" data-is-only-node=\"\"\u003eDimensions (cm): 29 × 29\u003cbr data-start=\"2062\" data-end=\"2065\"\u003eLanguage: English\u003cbr data-start=\"2082\" data-end=\"2085\"\u003ePages: 224\u003cbr data-start=\"2095\" data-end=\"2098\"\u003ePublisher \/ Editor: Prestel Verlag, Munich \/ London \/ New York\u003cbr data-start=\"2160\" data-end=\"2163\"\u003eISBN: 978-3-7913-4689-2\u003cbr data-start=\"2186\" data-end=\"2189\"\u003eCondition: Near fine\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"DaRWIN","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":52685679198546,"sku":null,"price":40.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0999\/7058\/0818\/files\/TODWEBB_copy_copy_9df91959-4ce5-433d-ac33-4a7353b87c16.jpg?v=1770838241","url":"https:\/\/thedarwin.es\/products\/this-must-be-the-place-pieter-hugo-2012","provider":"DaRWIN","version":"1.0","type":"link"}