South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s latest book, Permanent Error, pictures Agbogbloshie, a Ghanaian dumping ground for global electronic waste and home to slum-dwellers willing to endanger their health burning the techno-trash to harvest precious metals. Unlike consumer products of the past, today’s electronic gadgetry is near obsolete within two to three years, creating some 50 million metric tonnes of “e-waste” per year. Much of that techno-trash is sold and recycled in China, Nigeria, India, Vietnam and Ghana.

Hugo’s first two books, The Hyena and Other Men and Nollywood were shot in Nigeria, and the work in Permanent Error also comes from West Africa, in particular from a suburban dump near Accra, the capital of Ghana. Agbogbloshie is the new global wasteground for discarded computers, computer games, mobile phones, printers, and other gadgetry, and Hugo’s stark photos show young slum-dwellers burning trash in the bleak landscape. The toxic fumes they create endanger both their own health and the environment in which they live and keep their cattle, creating a lasting problem that produces a permanent error of a different kind.

Hugo’s third book consists of 60 colour images and two essays, written by Federica Angelucci and Jim Puckett. Given there are no captions other than the names of the people photographed, it’s these essays which frame the subject matter and provide context. The photographs are instantly recognisable as Hugo’s, shot with his habitual, desaturated colours and, in nearly every case, in square format. Three of the frames are panoramas, which help convey the sheer scale of the place, but all the images show apocalyptic scenes combining high-tech trash, black plumes of smoke and grazing cattle.

Ten or so of the photographs are carefully composed portraits, reminiscent of Hugo’s Nigerian hyena handlers in their deadpan style – men pictured centre of the frame in spontaneous poses, eyes directed towards the viewer.

One of the most powerful portraits is of a young man, Abdulai Yahaya, crouching down for a close portrait [above] in front of the burning Agblogbloshie; his arms and face are covered in sweat from the heat and hard work, and the two streams under his eyes look like rivers of tears. Abdulai’s stare is discomforting, reminding Western viewers of their complicity with the consumption and obsolescence that have led to his fate and the lack of detail about the boy, help make him seem emblematic.

It’s a powerful representation of a place where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and hard drives – Permanent Error paints a dark picture of the conditions imposed on this slum community, and the flip side of our rapid technological progress.

Permanent Error by Pieter Hugo is published by Prestel Publishing (ISBN: 978-3-7913-4520-9), priced £30. Visit www.randomhouse.de/prestel_eng.