Vale Tim Page
The photographic community is mourning the loss of one of the greats. Veteran photojournalist Tim Page passed away at 78 from liver and pancreatic cancer at his home just outside of Bellingen, in New South Wales, on 24 August.
Tim started his photographic career covering the civil war and the coup in Laos in 1965, and also the Six Day War in the Middle East in 1967, but he was best known for his coverage of the Vietnam War, where he was wounded on four separate occasions.
Author of ten books and the inspiration for Dennis Hopper’s character in Apocalypse Now, in 2009 Tim spent nine months in Afghanistan as the Photographic Peace Ambassador for the UN and was named one of the ‘100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time’.
Later in life, he covered the aftermath of war, bring the world’s attention to the innocent victims of war. He also returned to Vietnam and Cambodia on a regular basis where he ran workshops and shot assignments.
Determined to keep the memory alive of photographers who had died in Vietnam and Indochina between 1945 and 1975, in 1997 he and Horst Faas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer of the Vietnam War, published Requiem, which contained the work of 135 photographers.
Renowned photojournalist Stephen Dupont was a close friend of Tim’s for decades and looked up to him as mentor. He shared his thoughts online, and gave us permission to also share his heartfelt words.
I post this with a heavy heart and deepest sorrow, my close friend and mentor Tim Page passed away due to an aggressive cancer yesterday at 4:15pm. The doors have closed, you’ve taken your last flight to the DMZ, the pain you carried with you for so long, a lost shadow into the unknown you travel, one last assignment, a final page of history.
I first met you in a book in 1989 ('Page After Page'), a battered copy just like the contents inside. I was there with Ben Bohane covering the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia for Playboy magazine. It was my first ever overseas assignment, my first taste of what it meant to be a photo journalist. Your words, your wisdom, your madness and your photos inspired me to be a photographer, a witness of our times.
You opened the doors for me to an unimaginable and compelling and happy life, I can’t thank you enough Tim! You inspired me and generations of photojournalists and you still do to this day and beyond. For me though, it was your friendship and humanity that touched me most, I learnt that it was more important to be a good person, a truthful person with morals and compassion then to be the best photojournalist in the world. You brought humanity into your vision and deep into my own. I cherish the times we spent together, me resting on your every word and stories, you, a joint that seemed to never go out, clouded in a haze of smoke, recounting your experiences and tales of beauty and beasts.
From Buddha to the Nha Drang, from Woodstock to Watergate and onto your final resting place of Bellingen, the peace that nurtured you along with your beautiful partner Mau among the ghost gums. Off you go comrade, off you go into this dark dark night, smokes are abound because we all love you for the legacy you left behind and your heart of gold.
I took this portrait of Tim back in 2012 and titled it 'The Ghosts of Nam'.
