Obituary: Tim Page

Tim Page is considered one of the most renowned photographers of the Vietnam War – and, at the same time, he was known to be infamous and flamboyant. Daring, bold and staying close to the action, the important pictures he took with his Leica M were among those responsible for transforming the image of the war, as well as the image of the war reporter. Now the legendary photographer has passed away at his home in Fernmount, New South Wales, in his adopted home of Australia. He was 78 years old and suffered from pancreatic and liver cancer.

At the age of 17, Page secretly left his adoptive parents in England, and travelled through Europe and the Middle East, then on to India and Nepal. Just a year later he found himself in Saigon, where he spent the next five years reporting on the Vietnam War: he was working on assignment for Time-Life, UPI, Paris Match and the Associated Press. A self-taught photographer, Page quickly made himself a name as a fearless photo reporter. Later on, his pictures would not only serve as background documentation for many films about the Vietnam War, but he himself would become the model for the risk-taking and drug-addicted photographer, which inspired Dennis Hopper's frighteningly impressive performance in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film, Apocalypse Now.

Page considered his work was essential for documenting the suffering and senselessness of war: “Any war picture is an anti-war picture,” he said in an interview in 2013, then added, “I’m not saying that photography stopped the Vietnam War, but I think it contributed to swaying public opinion.” In his 1988 autobiography, Page After Page, he looks back sarcastically on his wartime experiences, including fatal head injuries: “I used to sit and scratch off my own blood and brains from the interstices of the Leicas, though they never looked really clean again.” He was seriously wounded a number of times, and barely escaped death, yet he still kept returning to the war effort.

Even after the war was over, Vietnam kept its hold on him. He travelled there once again at the beginning of the eighties, to commemorate with a memorial the photographer colleagues who had died in the war. He had lost many of his closest friends, including Sean Flynn and Dana Stone. In 1997, he published the photo book Requiem, a collaboration with colleague and Pulitzer Prize-winner Horst Faas: it presents pictures by 135 photographers who lost their lives in Indochina between 1945 and 1975. The book earned Page and Faas the Robert Capa Gold Medal in 1997. Page filmed numerous documentaries and two feature films, and is the author of ten books; his archives include around 750,000 photographs. In 2009, Page spent five months in Afghanistan as a photographic UNO Peace Ambassador; his work has been honoured with numerous awards. In more recent years, Page taught at Griffith University in Australia, and gave photography seminars in Southeast Asia.