Bloody ‘I’ve had a interesting life’

Photographer Bruce Moss spent decades travelling the world capturing everything from wars to royal tours. He’s now 95, and hasn’t stopped taking pictures, as reports.

‘‘Ispotted this youthful soldier, fresh off the landing craft, looking scared out of his wits,’’ recalls photojournalist Bruce Moss of a picture he took more than 50 years ago. The year was 1965 and Moss was on an assignment that became a highlight of his career – covering the Vietnam War. ‘‘Moving in, I got his attention, resulting in this shot. I often wonder if he made it.’’

At Qui Nhon beach, South Vietnam, the New Zealander was the only photographer witnessing the initial landing of 7th Cavalry Marines, when he saw the young man sitting on bags, with barbed wire running across the golden sands.

‘‘All I was told at press headquarters in Saigon that morning was there was something of possible interest taking place on the beach at Qui Nhon, and fellow correspondents were looking for something promising more action,’’ says Moss.

‘‘So I found myself on my own standing alongside General Westmoreland, Commander of US Forces in South Vietnam, and Henry Cabot Lodge, US Ambassador to South Vietnam, awaiting the initial landing of 7th Cavalry Marines. I recall Lodge telling me, ‘We’ll soon have the situation sorted out, I have just had my old C47 replaced with a jet’.’’

Moss spent seven weeks in Vietnam. He still remembers the fear in the eyes of a young mother, baby at her breast, who was being treated by an American medic after being hit by napalm.

‘‘When I raised my camera, she thought I was going to shoot her.’’

When he left Vietnam, the 707 plane took off from Saigon almost straight up.

‘‘We took off steeply because of the shells and rockets. I sat in a bathtub filled with disinfectant in Hong Kong, covered in sores and itching, hoping I could get rid of the bugs, then I slept for two days.’’

Moss credits his charm and the novelty of his New Zealand accent for helping him talk his way into his dream job as a photojournalist. He worked on many publications, including Canada’s Weekend, which sold three million copies a week, and photographed many history-making events and people.

An early assignment was a portrait of Edmund Hillary when he came through on his world tour after climbing Mt Everest.

Moss’s photo, of Hillary stretched out on a hotelroom bed, his boots looking huge, was rejected by his then-editor, but he sold it to Life magazine for about US$200 – the equivalent of US$2000 (NZ$2758) today.

Other assignments included the first flight from New York to South America, several royal tours, and sharing a table with actors Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski a week before Tate was murdered in August 1969 by members of the Manson family.

‘‘I followed the Queen Mother all around a tour of Nova Scotia. She always looked animated in photos because she’d look round, and recognise and greet the press photographers accompanying her.’’

Moss, who turns 96 in August, grew up in Northland, Wairarapa and Cambridge. He was a teenager when his family moved to Inglewood, where his father managed the BNZ bank. A weekend job rewinding the films after they were shown at the Inglewood ‘‘talkies’’ triggered a love of film.

‘‘I like the smell of acetone, and I love the smell of freshly opened up film, especially colour.’’

It was a miserable time, as he was bullied at New Plymouth Boys’ High School. He’d moved there from the exclusive St Peter’s School in Cambridge, where he’d first discovered photography and music.

He remembers sitting on the beach at New Plymouth, dreaming of going overseas.

Later, he read a book by a journalist titled How to travel the world and get paid, and took a ferry to Sydney, where he survived on cornflakes and water in the YMCA hostel until he found a job at a hotel in the Blue Mountains. There, a woman called Betty who worked in the office taught him to type on her typewriter and encouraged him to write.

‘‘One day when the fog was rolling in to Katoomba, we hopped on a train and went to sunny Queensland.’’

They ended up at Daydream Island, an exclusive resort, where Betty got a job playing the piano to entertain guests, and told the owners that Moss was her nephew.

The editor of Reader’s Digest came to stay at the island, and Moss asked for advice on how to get into journalism. ‘‘He said, if you want to be a reporter, just write.’’

His first story was about the New Zealand timber industry, and was published in the Sydney Morning Herald.

In 1952 he went to Canada and talked his way into a job at the Vancouver Sun, mixing chemicals in the darkroom, and eventually got to take photos. Over nearly three decades in Canada, Moss saw his work published in titles such as National Geographic and Life. When he eventually returned to New Zealand, he bought a bach in Northland. ‘‘I was travelling all over the world, I was freelancing, all from my little shack at Ahipara.’’

In the early 1990s, he decided to return to Taranaki. ‘‘I wanted to be halfway between Auckland and Wellington, and by pure luck I came down through Taumarunui.’’

He stopped in Stratford for a coffee, and struck up a conversation with somebody who told him houses were cheap there. ‘‘A new, very fancy retirement home was being built, and I bought the first unit.’’

He’s been there ever since, still driving and living independently.

Moss recently got himself a cellphone and now uses it instead of a camera to take photos.

He credits his long life to his many interests - and to serendipity.

‘‘I’m extremely grateful for a pretty exciting life, I’m extremely appreciative of serendipity, things that happened for my benefit that were improbable.

‘‘The key to it is being thankful for what you’ve got and not giving up and being troubled about what could happen. I don’t have grandchildren, but I have had a bloody interesting life.’’

‘‘The key to it is being thankful for what you’ve got and not giving up and being troubled about what could happen.’’ Bruce Moss

Moss’ caught images of General Westmorland, above left, Commander of US Forces in South Vietnam, and Henry Cabot Lodge, above right, US Ambassador to South Vietnam, while on a beach in Vietnam awaiting the initial landing of 7th Cavalry Marines. But it’s the photo of a scared marine, right, that’s stuck in his memory.

Moss first took a photo of Sir Edmund Hillary soon after his conquest of Everest during a visit to Vancouver. This, though, was much later during show day in Kaitaia.

Captured Viet Cong fighters awaiting an uncertain fate having been offloaded from a Huey helicopter straight from a battle zone near Pleiku.

Moss thought this image from a school at Waitomo would ‘‘make a great photo for an Air New Zealand publicity campaign depicting the Kiwi way of life’’. But the woman handling the airline account in San Francisco, who’d never been to New Zealand, told him: ‘‘We could never use that... the children have bare feet.’’

ANDY JACKSON/ STUFF Bruce Moss weilded a Speed Graphic 4x5 camera in Canada in the 1960s, right. These days, the 95-year-old still enjoys photography but prefers his camera-phone.

Bruce Moss’ career took him around the world – including to India where he captured this boatman at Varanasi on the River Ganges.