A dump site for digital technology, Africa’s notorious Agbogbloshie Market is a toxic wasteland where Europe’s outdated computers are scavenged for spare parts and torched to recycle precious materials. The surreal site in the capital city of Accra has been burdened with tribal rivalries, drug problems, and child trafficking, while receiving repeated warnings from international agencies about massive emissions of noxious fumes, threatening the pickers, and poisonous chemicals, seeping into the soil.
A surprisingly suppressed story, it recently gained worldwide attention when the New York Times Magazine published pictures of the heavily polluted place by South African photographer Pieter Hugo. Previously praised for his colorful portrayal of Nollywood, Nigeria’s explosive film capital, Hugo possesses an acute aesthetic eye, along with a fearlessness to confront and expose the shameful side of commercial consumption and the enormous amounts of unwanted waste tied to the rapid evolution of digital technology.
Pieter Hugo’s exhibition Permanent Error is on view at Michael Stevenson in Capetown, South Africa. A book of the photographs will be published by Prestel in Spring 2011.
Click through below for a gallery of images.
Pieter Hugo, Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2009, Courtesy Michael Stevenson, Cape Town and Yossi Milo, New York
Comments (11)
Africa is a continent, not a country, so please indicate that this is Ghana’s wasteland!
I’m Ghanaian, and this story has nothing to do with Africa as a whole. Look, even in Ghana, most people would not know about this site, much less people in neighboring countries. It appears you have no knowledge of the subject you write about. It would have been proper to put this story in proper context and note that this is just one of many dump sites (just like in the west) in Accra, the capital of Ghana, but of course, that would take out the sensationalism, wouldn’t it?
I agree with Prmph. This can be heavily taken out of context without further information. This isn’t just the “face of Africa.”
I very much doubt that the photographer Pieter Hugo meant these photographs to be any kind of representation of ‘the face of Africa’. These photos simply and powerfully document a few facts of life on this planet, the insupportable discrepancy between rich and poor, the insane mountains of garbage created by the ‘developed’ nations, and their disastrous effects on the environment. Prmph is right in saying that this has little to do with Ghana. Similar scenes matching environmental scourge with ravaging poverty can sadly be found all over the world. The time has come for us all to face the consequences of our seemingly insatiable demand for the next e gadget.
I see that, presently, 67 people “liked” this article. And what sense is to be made of that? How many “disliked” it? One figure without the other is about as meaningless as things get.
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Amazing photography! The 10th slide is the most powerful. I understand why there is a “like” button… but it still strikes me as sort of weird.
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