Hugo Van Lawick - Photographer

Photographer

In November 1959, Hugo went to Africa to pursue his passion of photographing and taking footage of wild animals, finding employment as a cameraman for a filmmaking couple. After a film he produced as the background to a lecture given by Louis Leakey was seen by a staff member at National Geographic, he was given a retainer for future work for the magazine.

Upon the recommendation of Leakey, Hugo began photographing and filming chimpanzees of the Kasakela chimpanzee community at Gombe Stream National Park in August 1962. It was at Gombe that he met Jane Goodall, Leakey's protégé, who had since July 1960 been stationed in the park researching chimpanzees. As it happened, he teamed up with her not only to make films about the chimps, but in marriage as well. The two were wed on 28 March 1964 in Chelsea Old Church, London. They lived in Tanzania for many years, both at Gombe and elsewhere on other research projects, and were joined in 1967 by their son, Hugo Eric Louis, affectionately known as "Grub". Hugo and Jane were divorced in 1974, although they maintained the friendship on which their relationship had originally been founded. On 23 March 1978, in Banjul, Gambia, Hugo married Theresa Rice. They were divorced 19 January 1984.

Through Hugo's film People of the Forest the world came to know members of Gombe's "F" family, namely Flo, Fifi, and Flint, in addition to a number of their other immediate relations. By the time he stopped filming at Gombe, he had created a visual record spanning over twenty years and documenting the lives of three generations of chimpanzees. Hugo made a number of wildlife documentaries for television, but also made several films for theatrical release on 35 mm film, such as The Leopard Son and Serengeti Symphony, both produced by Nature Conservation Films WW. Besides making films himself, Hugo was an important influence and mentor to a younger generation of wildlife filmmakers. His tented camp, Ndutu, in the Serengeti, became through his guidance a breeding ground for new wildlife filmmakers.