Photo series "Looking Aside" by Pieter Hugo (2004-2005)

"In the early 2000s, whilst living in Italy, I began photographing people with albinism in various parts of the world. I was travelling as a commissioned photographer and took the opportunity to explore my own interests whilst fulfilling my professional obligations. My first portraits featured people posing naturally in environmental settings. As the project evolved, I chose to focus on South Africa and limit myself to head and shoulder portraits using studio lighting and a neutral background.

Many of the people I photographed had vision problems – one of the side effects of albinism – and worked in institutions for the visually impaired. This led me to broaden the scope of my project to include people who were blind or partially sighted. The same feelings of discomfort I experienced when photographing people with albinism arose when photographing people with poor or no vision. I think the discomfort of meeting an unrequited gaze is self-imposed. It is not something the subjects feel.

While working on this piece, I visited my grandmother in a care facility for frail people. I recognized the same sense of discomfort around older people. My grandmother appears in this series of portraits, as do I. It was the first of many self-portraits I made for exhibition. I am both the creator and a kind of marginal protagonist in my series about marginalized people.

In these early works I explicitly adopted a confrontational stance, an attitude that is repeated in many of my later works. It is an unwavering series. I want the subjects to correspond to the intensity of my own gaze."