Pieter Hugo’s “Being Present” is on view at the 52nd Les Rencontres d’Arles photography festival, from July 4 to September 26, 2021.
Curated by Federica Angelucci, the exhibition brings together more than 100 head and shoulders portraits created by Hugo since the early 2000s. The selected photographs are in the department of forensics, surveillance, and typologies.
“My work is about the notion of being an outsider: I feel I inhabit this space myself and I embrace this awareness as a way to engage with the people I photograph. I almost always work by announcing myself at the outset; I look, and I am equally looked at. When making a portrait there is a brief moment in which cynicism disappears. There is beauty in being held in the gaze of another,” said Hugo.
