Tim Page (photographer)

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Template:Short description Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Timothy John Page (25 May 1944 – 24 August 2022) was a British photographer. He was noted for the photos he took of the Vietnam War, and was later based in Brisbane, Australia.

Early life

Page was born John Spencer Russell in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, on 25 May 1944.<ref name="NYT obit">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="WP obit">Template:Cite news</ref> He did not know his birth mother; his biological father was killed in a torpedo attack in the Arctic while serving in the Royal Navy during World War II and Page was put up for adoption after he was born.<ref name="Telegraph obit">Template:Cite news</ref> His adoptive father worked as an accountant; his adoptive mother was a housewife.<ref name="WP obit" /> Page was raised in Orpington,<ref name="Telegraph obit" /> and left England in 1962 to make his way overland driving through Europe, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand and Laos.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="WP obit" /> Without money in Laos, he found work as an agricultural advisor for USAID.<ref name="WP obit" />

Career

Page began work as a press photographer in Laos stringing for UPI and AFP, having taught himself photography.<ref>Mydans, Seth (18 June 2010), "Combing Cambodia for Missing Friends" Template:Webarchive, The Saturday Profile, The New York Times.</ref> His exclusive photographs of an attempted coup d'état in Laos in 1965 for UPI got him a staff position in the Saigon bureau of the news agency. He is celebrated for his work as a freelance accredited press photographer in Vietnam and Cambodia during the 1960s, also finding time to cover the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967. Due to a near-death experience in the early 1960s, he came to view his life as "free time".<ref>Tim Page, Page after Page (Glasgow, 1989), p. 31.</ref> This led him to take photographs in dangerous situations where other journalists would not venture.<ref name="jackson">Kevin Jackson, "Tim Page: Pictures of War and Peace", The Independent, 20 October 2001.</ref> Similarly, Page was captivated by the excitement and glamour of warfare, which helped contribute to the style of photographs he is acclaimed for.<ref name="jackson" />

By late 1965 Page was sharing a house at 47 Bui Thi Xuan, Saigon, with Leonardo Caparros and fellow correspondents Simon Dring, Martin Stuart-Fox and Steve Northup, known as "Frankie's House" after the resident Vietnamese houseboy. Frankie's House became a social club for a group of correspondents between field assignments and their friends who smoked marijuana there.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Page did not shy away from the drug culture he was involved in during his time in Vietnam, devoting a large amount of his book Page after Page to it. In Dispatches, Michael Herr wrote of Page as the most "extravagant" of the "wigged-out crazies running around Vietnam", due in most respects to the amount of drugs that he enjoyed taking.<ref name="herr189191">Michael Herr, Dispatches (London, 1978), pp. 189–191.</ref> His unusual personality was part of the inspiration for the character of the journalist played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.<ref>Gaby Wood, '"Mourning Vietnam" Template:Webarchive, The Observer, 23 September 2001.</ref>

In 1965, shortly after Page got his first publication in Life magazine, Beryl Fox was filming The Mills of the Gods: Vietnam for the CBC series Document. During three weeks of filming, Page was hired to shoot some of the documentary. At a time when the anti-war movement was in its infancy, the film helped to open conversations around the world. In 1966, the film won the George Polk Award for Best Television Documentary<ref>"CBC show wins award". The Globe and Mail, 3 March 1966.</ref> and the Canadian Film Award for Film of the Year.<ref>"Beryl Fox production wins top film award". The Globe and Mail, 7 May 1966.</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Page was injured in action four times. The first, in September 1965, was in Chu Lai where he was struck by shrapnel in the legs and stomach;<ref name="Jackson">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Feinstein">Template:Cite news</ref> the second was in Da Nang during the 1966 Buddhist riots, where he received more shrapnel wounds to the head, back, and arms;<ref name="Telegraph obit" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> the third in August 1966 happened in the South China sea, where he was on board the Coast Guard cutter Template:Ship, when it was mistaken for a Viet Cong ship, and U.S. Air Force pilots strafed the vessel, leaving Page adrift at sea with over two hundred wounds.<ref name=Jackson/><ref name="Telegraph obit" /><ref name="Reguly">Template:Cite news</ref> Lastly, in April 1969, Page jumped out of a helicopter to help load wounded soldiers. At the same time, a sergeant stepped on a mine close by, sending a 2-inch piece of shrapnel into Page's head.<ref>Herr, Dispatches, pp. 185–191, 197–199.</ref> This list of injuries led his colleagues in the field to joke that he would never make it to 23 years of age.<ref>Herr, Dispatches, p. 200.</ref> He spent the next year in the United States undergoing extensive neuro-surgery. During recovery he became closely involved with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and worked as a caregiver for amputees, traumatically shocked and stressed young men. One of these was Ron Kovic.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Richard Boyle was also friends with Kovic and Page at this time.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

On 9 December 1967, Page was arrested in New Haven, Connecticut, along with fellow journalists Mike Zwerin and Yvonne Chabrier at the infamous Doors concert where Jim Morrison was arrested onstage. Charges against all four were dropped due to lack of evidence.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Page had a part in the Papers on a war, which became the Pentagon Papers, released by Daniel Ellsberg who had stayed at Frankie's House. Ellsberg gave Page a copy inscribed "To Tim who may well have changed the course of the war".<ref name="smh25822">Template:Cite news</ref>

In the 1970s Page worked as a freelance photographer for music magazines such as Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. In January 1973 Page spent time with Bill Cardoso and Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering Super Bowl VII. Page photographed Thompson riding a Black Shadow Motorbike, but Rolling Stone lost the negatives. Rolling Stone wanted Page to go back to Vietnam with Thompson in 1975 but Thompson said Page was too crazy.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> During Page's recovery in the spring of 1970 he learnt of the capture of his best friend, roommate and fellow photo-journalist Sean Flynn in Cambodia. Throughout the 1970s and 80s he tried to discover Flynn's fate and final resting place and wanted to erect a memorial to all those in the media who either were killed or went missing in the war. This led him to found the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation and was the genesis for the book Requiem, co-edited with fellow Vietnam War photographer Horst Faas.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Requiem won the George Polk Book Award and the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1997.<ref name="polk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="smh25822" /> Page's quest to clear up the mystery of Flynn's fate continued into his later years.<ref name="Telegraph obit" />

Page's book Requiem contains photographs taken by all of the photographers and journalists killed during the Vietnamese wars against the Japanese, French and Americans.<ref name="WP obit" /><ref name=Feinstein/> Requiem has become since early 2000 a travelling photographic exhibition placed under the custody of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.<ref name="Huntington">Template:Cite news</ref> The exhibition has been presented in Vietnam's War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> as well as in New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, Hanoi, Lausanne, and London.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2011, it was selected to be the main exhibition of the Month of Photography Asia in Singapore.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Page also covered wars in Israel, Bosnia and Afghanistan.<ref name="smh25822" /> As a peace activist he was patron of organisations such as Mine Action Group and Soldier On, a veterans' support group in Australia. He was keen to "highlight the folly of war", stating that "the only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph".<ref name="smh25822" />

Later years

Page was the subject of many documentaries and two films, and the author of many books. He lived in Brisbane, Australia, having retired from covering wars. He was an adjunct professor of photojournalism at Griffith University.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="WP obit" />

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During the 2010–2011 Queensland floods, Page's archives in his basement were damaged, highlighting at the time the need for a longer-term home for what he estimated were three-quarters of a million images accumulated over his 45-year career.<ref>Noble, Christopher, "Tim Page needs home for his photo archive" Template:Webarchive, MarketWatch, 13 February 2011. Retrieved 9 August 2011.</ref>

The Australian War Memorial holds a collection of Page's photography.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal life

Page's three marriages ended in divorce.<ref name="WP obit" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He had one child, Kit, from his relationship with Clare Clifford.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="AP">Template:Cite news</ref>

Page died on 24 August 2022 at his home in Bellingen, New South Wales.<ref name=Reguly/> He was 78, and had liver cancer prior to his death.<ref name="NYT obit" /><ref name="WP obit" />

Publications

Films about Page

  • Danger on the Edge of Town (1991) – a film on Page's search to discover the fate of his friends Sean Flynn and Dana Stone who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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References

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