Vietnam photographer was considered ‘too crazy’ even for Hunter S Thompson
As the most fearless of war photographers, Tim Page was wounded in action four times in Vietnam before he had reached his 25th birthday. Yet the bullets, grenades and landmines failed to stop him taking dramatic, intense and often disturbing combat pictures, which appeared in Life, Time, Paris Match and other journals and helped to shape perceptions of the war.
In the 1992 book The Vietnam War: An Eyewitness History, he was described as a photographer who would ‘‘go anywhere, fly in anything, snap the shutter under any conditions, and when hit go at it again in bandages’’.
His injuries were inflicted by both sides, starting with shrapnel wounds in his legs and stomach, sustained during a Viet Cong attack on the US base at Chu Lai in 1965.
The following year he received more shrapnel wounds in an attack at Da Nang, where the airbase was the primary entry point for American servicemen flying in to join the fighting. He was soon back in action, only to be wounded again when US Air Force pilots strafed a coastguard vessel he was on, in the mistaken belief that it was a Viet Cong ship. Bloodied and exhausted, he spent several hours floating in the South China Sea wondering if he was going to survive, before he was rescued.
His fourth and most serious hit came in 1969 when he had hitched a ride aboard a helicopter sent to rescue injured US soldiers. As it landed, he jumped out to help stretcher the wounded. The platoon sergeant stepped on a mine and lost both legs and Page was struck in the head by a two-inch piece of shrapnel from the blast.
Even that did not stop him changing lenses and shooting a few frames before he collapsed. He was rushed to a field hospital and pronounced dead, but revived and was flown to the US, where he needed neuro-surgery and spent a year in rehabilitation and therapy.
He subscribed enthusiastically to Robert Capa’s dictum that ‘‘if your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough’’. His fearlessness derived from a karmic belief that he was living on ‘‘free time from the gods’’ after a near-fatal motorcycle accident at 16. ‘‘I had seen the tunnel. There was no light at the end and it did not seem scary,’’ he wrote.
The accident left him with a limp – and a lust to push everything to the limit. When not on the front line, he shared a house in Saigon with a group of fellow war correspondents and photographers. It became party central where large quantities of marijuana, LSD and opium were consumed to a soundtrack of blaring rock music. ‘‘What a great place to have a war,’’ he quipped. ‘‘Good-looking women, great food, beaches, the best dope.’’
The exploits of Page, who has died aged 78, were part of the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s manic character in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 movie Apocalypse Now, as was Page’s close friend and fellow photojournalist Sean Flynn, son of actor Errol Flynn.
While recuperating in America in 1970, he learnt that Flynn and Dana Stone, another American photographer, had been posted as missing in action in Cambodia. They were never seen again and Page spent decades trying to discover what had happened to them. He visited the country to seek clues as to what had befallen them and made a 1991 documentary film about his search.
Timothy John Page was born in 1944 in Kent, southeast England. His biological father was killed in World War II while serving in the Royal Navy and he never knew the identity of his birth mother. Shortly after his birth he was adopted by a well-to-do accountant and his wife, who brought him up as their own.
Restless and eager for adventure, he left home at 17 with £15 in his pocket, leaving behind a note that read: ‘‘Dear parents, am leaving for Europe or perhaps Navy and hence the world. Do not know how long I shall go for.’’ Making his way across Europe, Pakistan, India, Burma and Thailand, he worked along the way in a brewery, as a cook and as a drug smuggler. He arrived in Laos penniless. Landing a job with the US Agency for International Development, he began sending freelance photos to United Press International. He was offered a contract in 1965 and spent most of the next five years in Vietnam.
During a break in 1967 he attended a concert by The Doors at which singer Jim Morrison was arrested for inciting a riot. When Page began photographing the affray, he too was arrested and beaten. He spent the night in jail and then headed back to Vietnam, where he joked that he felt safer.
While recuperating from his neurosurgery in 1969, he attended the Woodstock festival. He also worked for Rolling Stone magazine, sharing assignments with Hunter S Thompson, the founder of so-called ‘‘gonzo journalism’’. When the magazine proposed sending Page back to Vietnam in 1975 to cover the last days of the war with Thompson, the author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas declined on the grounds that Page was ‘‘too crazy’’ even by his devil-may-care standards.
After leaving war photography, he settled in Australia, where he became an adjunct professor of photojournalism at Griffith University, Queensland. He is survived by long-term partner Marianne Harris and a son, Kit, from a previous relationship with Clare Clifford. –