An exhibition in honourof a great photographer

Nov 24, 2009

IT is not everyday that Ugandans honour the memories of deceased great deceased people. But the associates of the late David Pluths have decided to pay homage to the great photographer who passed away on May 21.

Joseph Ssemutooke

IT is not everyday that Ugandans honour the memories of deceased great deceased people. But the associates of the late David Pluths have decided to pay homage to the great photographer who passed away on May 21.

The David Pluths photo exhibition held at the Emin Pasha Hotel in Nakasero from November 18 to 24, was in honour of a man, who through photography, did so much for Uganda and East Africa.

Pluths’ name might be unknown to many Ugandans, but his photographs remain some of the most dignified and best known Ugandan images ever captured on camera. Some of his images — Two Boats, Happy Warrior and Party Time Karamoja — are all over the Internet and are being used on postage stamps.

His works portray the different aspects of Ugandan life — culture, people, landscape and wildlife.

Pluths left behind a number of books on photography collections, most of them about Uganda. These include Uganda Rwenzori, A Range of Images, In the Eye of the Storm, Karamoja: Uganda’s Land of Warrior Nomads, Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa and Kilimanjaro: Africa's Great White Mountain.

At the time of his death, Pluths had moved from still photography to film. He was working on a feature film about Karamoja, which his associates are completing.

Pluths died in the Nyungwe National Forest Park in Rwanda, where he was filming a documentary. Although he often argued that his photography was not art, critics and colleagues were of the view that he was more of an artist than a photographer.

An art critic once said of his work: “There is a painterly quality about David Pluths’ work, something monumental in composition, a richness of colour and a creaminess of texture that seems divorced from the science of photography.”

Pluths was born in the US in 1946 and worked in different sectors. In 1995, his childhood love for photography was revived and he formed his own photography company, Fotografx.

He moved through much of Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Ethiopia) taking photographs, but mostly fell in love with Uganda where he was based most of the time when he was not travelling.

He faced many hardships while taking images, surviving Kony’s LRA insurgents, a gorilla attack in Rwanda and being killed by a Karimajong.

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