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Portraits of Haiti: Photographer?s show captures strength of Haitian people

Thomas Plaut was carrying an 80-pound backpack full of medicine when a small Haitian woman came up to him with an offer to carry it for him.

Plaut politely declined. Where he comes from ? Western North Carolina, where the former Mars Hill College sociology professor lives ? men don?t let women carry that kind of load. The pack was full of medicine that an Asheville-based medical mission was going to distribute in a remote Haitian village.

?About another 100 feet, my Haitian counterpart comes up and says, ?This woman wants to carry your pack,?? Plaut said. ?Clearly, I was sort of being insulting if I didn?t let her carry my pack, so I gave it to her. This woman, maybe she?s 40, takes this 80 pounds on her head and starts walking up the mountain. We had these heavy bags of grain, and other women start carrying these 100-pound bags up the mountains. We were absolutely stunned.?

It?s that resoluteness in the face of adversity that Plaut has captured in his photos of Haitians showing through January at the YMI Cultural Center. A second show at the front gallery at Pack Place illustrates the work Mission Manna was doing in March and earlier this month.

Feeding the hungry

Twice a year Mission Manna, a group of medical volunteers from WNC, goes to Montrouis, a town about 50 miles northwest of Port-au-Prince. One of its volunteers is Plaut?s son, Tim Plaut, a doctor at Community Family Practice on Merrimon Avenue.

In Montrouis and villages nearby, Mission Manna provides antibodies to the acutely ill and multivitamins and worming medicine to everyone. It also provides something called AK-1000, a soup mix of beans and rice ground up locally that staves off malnutrition, which in Haiti is a major killer of children.

More than 80 percent of its 9 million residents live in poverty, many without access to clean water, proper health care and adequate food. While Haiti accounts for only 2 percent of births in Latin America and the Caribbean, it accounts for 19 percent of deaths for children younger than 5, according to UNICEF statistics. It has the highest death rates for children younger than 5, with 123 children dying for every 1,000 births. The rate is 38 for the Dominican Republic, which is on the same island as Haiti. In the United States, which is closer to Haiti geographically than it is to parts of itself, the rate is 8, the UNICEF figures show.

Documenting these people

In the mid-1960s, Plaut was a writer for the Peace Corps who shot photos for his stories in Turkey, Malaysia and Thailand. He put his camera away until he got a new one ? a Nikon D50 ? before his March trip to Haiti.

?I expected to document what we were doing, and it turned out to be a very different thing,? he said. ?Instead of the process, I saw the people.?

?Towards Home? is his shot of a woman with a bucket of clothes balanced on her head, leading a pig up a rocky road. In ?You Speak ? I Work,? a hotel worker?s pressed lips and dozens of towels under the arms and on her head express the hard work she?s done. Three portraits of Oversen, a small boy with a huge growth under his amputated left arm, show the sweet child he was before he died in June.

Harry Harrison, executive director of the YMI, is impressed with what he said is the ?clarity? of Plaut?s photographs.

?The focus, the faces ? he just captured their spirit through his camera,? Harrison said. ?The show talks about the Africa Diaspora, people that are descendants of the African continent and how they have (gone) to new locations, new challenges and new achievements. The things that we are accustomed to are things they have learn to do without. They have their dignity and their spirit to survive.?

Looking at the hundreds of images he made in Haiti, Plaut too is struck by the faces.

?Contrary to what you hear in the media and from our own government, Haitians are very decent, hardworking people like people everywhere,? he said.

?So the YMI show is to show that ? to counter all the misplaced stereotypes and show the people who they are.?