Vietnam War photos earned acclaim
Model for Hopper role in Apocalypse Now
Tim Page, who has died aged 78, was a British-born photographer who made his name covering the war in Vietnam with powerful images; he won widespread acclaim for his work and was caricatured as the wildeyed dope-smoking snapper played by Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now.
Working for UPI and Life magazine, Page personified the war photographer as freebooting mercenary: hard-living, almost suicidally fearless, and dispassionate in the face of horror and barbarity. Dope-eyed and drawly, he would cadge rides around Vietnam in U.S. military helicopters, vividly capturing the conditions under which soldiers and Vietnamese civilians lived, fought and died.
When Michael Herr, author of the Vietnam War book Dispatches and one of the screenwriters on Apocalypse Now, first met Page in the 1960s, he recalled a “wiggedout crazy” who played the Mothers of Invention at full volume, inscribed his helmet with a lyric from Frank Zappa, adorned his field gear with “freak paraphernalia, scarves and beads,” and regularly put himself in the line of fire. Page was hit four times. On the last occasion, shrapnel went through his head and surgeons removed tissue the size of an orange from his brain.
At 16, a motorbike accident left him so smashed up he was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. His left hand and pelvis were crushed and he was left with a permanent limp. A year after the accident, he took his Pentax camera and ran away from home, leaving a note for his parents which read: “Dear Parents, Am leaving home for Europe and perhaps navy and hence the world. Do not contact authorities as I shall write periodically ... PS: Pay postage on parcels and cancel driving test.”
In 1963 he wound up in Laos, and made his name smuggling out exclusive pictures of the civil war between the U.s.-backed government and the communist Pathet Lao. In 1965, aged 21, he was sent to Saigon by UPI to cover the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam.
He is survived by his Australian partner Marianne Harris and by a son from a previous relationship.