Pieter Hugo

• TBW 2024
• Softcover, 1st edition. 124p
  
• New

In 2014 and 2015, Pieter Hugo met the subjects of his photographs in San Francisco’s Tenderloin and Los Angeles’s Skid Row districts. The high-key lighting of the relentless California sun characterizes these outdoor portraits made in the city streets. Bold colors and chiaroscuro form the language used by Hugo to complement the expansive gestures and curving forms of his subjects—wild and unrestrained. Hugo pairs this theme of abandonment with a style that invokes Dutch Golden Age or Baroque master painters such as Caravaggio or Frans Hals. The intensity of attention similarly brought to these sitters in their engagement with Hugo is palpable. The resulting photographs—so completely steeped in a careful handling of shape, form, color, and light—transcend beyond their specific moment in time to embody an overarching timelessness. Too frequently overlooked, Hugo brings our attention to these wildflowers blooming from the uncommon Californian land and its elusive promise of prosperity. Uninhibited and lawless, we bear witness to a truth that only they are capable of transmitting.

Proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Homeless Youth Alliance, which strives to empower young people experiencing homelessness to protect themselves, to educate each other, to reduce harm within the community, and to transition off the streets.

• Editorial RM 2022
  
• Softcover, 1st edition
  
• Used: near fine
  

n Solus Vol. I, Pieter Hugo reflects on the values that constitute the fashion industry’s shifting aesthetic through a series of straightforward portraits of street-cast models. Hugo found himself captivated by sitters with unconventional and atypical looks, particularly before they underwent fashion’s machinations of wardrobe, makeup and hair. Drawn to this uniqueness and recalling the sense of not-belonging that is part of the intense experience of youth, Hugo’s invitation to the models was “Simply present yourself”. The resulting photographs embrace vulnerability and frailty as much as they do the agency and idealism of their subjects.

Commenting on the gap between what may be understood as “yourself” and “model”, Hugo notes: “They seem so different to how I felt at their age. I was much more cynical, more nihilistic. They are more comfortable in their bodies than I ever was.”

Display copy some light wear and few faint marks to the cover.  Inside very fine.