THEATRICALITY AS A STRATEGY IN PIETER HUGO’S HYENA AND OTHER MEN AND NOLLYWOOD PHOTOGRAPHS

Abstract

This article looks at the concept of theatricality in two of Pieter Hugo’s photographic projects in Nigeria titled The Hyena and Other Men and Nollywoood. In The Hyena and Other Men photos I explore how theatricality allows a particular exposition of the sitter through which a sense of self is constructed. I make a theoretical argument as to how theatricality as an analytical tool can help us unpack subjectivity as performance in portrait photographs, and assist in investigating this pictorial space in which the self is constituted. Here that Hugo enacts theatricality as a mobile device that is devoid of the visible audience. In Nollywood I show that Hugo produces violence as the possible and the impossible. I also show that he dramatizes violence as the unresolved. The reading of violent theatricality takes me into an investigation of the significance of props used in the photographs such as guns, whips, blood, and knives and how Hugo deploys them in depicting violence.