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Turning the Page

^{Sarah Saunders | FEBRUARY 2008}

British photojournalist Tim Page was a legend at 22 for his exploits in Vietnam. These days it’s his humanitarian work - from clearing landmines to conducting photographic workshops for streetkids – that speaks volumes.

They say the character dancing alone in front of a full length mirror in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now is based on Tim Page.

Vietnam War photographer. Wounded five times. Pronounced dead twice. A legend at 22.

Interview after interview he’s asked about Dennis Hopper’s character in the movie. But it’s something that sits uncomfortably with him. These days he wants to be known for more.

You can’t blame journalists for bringing it up – Page’s life is the stuff of fiction, and it encapsulates “legend” in a nutshell.

When Tim set out from England across the globe at 17 after studying forestry, photography was the last thing on his mind. But as fate would have it, while working for US AID in Laos, a camera was thrust into Tim’s hand. It was 1964 and his instructions were to take shots of growing civil unrest. His photos sold to United Press International and as he headed into Saigon to report on the Vietnam War, the rest became history.

Adding to the glamour was Tim’s friendship with the dashing Sean Flynn, son of actor Errol. A fellow photographer, Sean, and Tim became firm friends after sharing a house in Saigon. Sean disappeared on assignment in Cambodia in 1970. From that day on, leading teams into Vietnam and Cambodia, Tim was single-minded in his determination to uncover the fate of his friend. Official documents released in the 1990s declared Sean had been kidnapped and later killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Tim left Vietnam himself in 1969 after narrowly escaping death in a landmine explosion. Like many of his fellow Vietnam vets the 1970s faded into a haze of numb despair. But, by the early 1980s he was back on track working with publishers and aid organisations.

The subject of several films and the author of nine books, Tim’s photographs are held in modern history’s sacred places: from the Imperial War Museum in London to Washington’s Smithsonian Institute.

Today Tim works tirelessly to rid Cambodia of its landmines and highlight the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Closer to home (now Brisbane) Tim, through the Red Cross, shares his photographic skills with homeless children and indigenous communities.

You were described you as “a legend” at 22. At the time did you realise that? How did you feel living in Vietnam and doing what you were doing at that age?

When you are young you are impetuous and full of zing. We are now able to see more of how the media impacted on public opinion and what was going in terms of its historical context. We had little perspective then. You didn’t get stuff flashed back to you on the internet. There were no faxes. Maybe you would get a telex saying you had made front page of the New York Times. So you had little concept of how the world saw you or how the world was really seeing Vietnam.

I had the misfortune to get wounded a number of times. When a member of the media gets hit it usually makes the media. I had no concept it was building into a legendary thing. I only ever thought about the pictures and going out and staying alive.

At the end of the day all wars are fought for profit. They’re the biggest businesses on the planet. But war always fascinates. When you’re young it’s easy to get sucked into it because it has all the aspirations of life and death and in-between. Adrenaline comes with the added attachments of fast cars, fast bikes, fast women, fast drugs, fast everything. To live in Saigon in the sixties – well you’ve seen the Quiet American – it was just absolutely divine. You’d buy LPs on the street; $4 for a bottle of Cognac; roll of film was a dollar; if you went down to the Cambodian border on your motorcycle you could get 10 kilos of dope for $10; six pipes of opium $3; a motorcycle $125…

And as a photographer you stayed right on that tsunami crest of emotion. If you stayed ut long enough and you knew what you were doing you could guarantee good images. I’d go out for five day assignments and then hang for two weeks. So I had no idea what was transpiring.

How did you cope with the brutality of what you were seeing? Did you feel fear?

Fear. If you’re not frightened, you’re not living. You’re terrified. You’re absolutely gob terrified. Fear generates an adrenaline rush. How much of that fear is suppressed by adrenaline, by that need to function, that need to survive? You learn somehow to turn fear around. Fear can paralyse. Nobody should experience what you see and do in war. You suppress fear so you can function. Hopefully you can turn it round so that you’re able to have pictures tell the stories of the emotions and the people in front of you.

Your best friend, Sean Flynn, disappeared in Cambodia in 1970. How did your quest to discover the truth shape your life?

It’s still shaping it. War is about profits. But for the guy out in the field the whole thing is about your mates and your family. And for those of you in military issue it’s about the guy next to you. I’m an adopted only-child. Sean was an only-child. In Sean I had a brother and a mate.

There’s a certain amount of spiritual gratification for resolving the issue. The Vietnamese return the remains of their loved ones to the family cemetery to appease the spirits and wondering souls. We have to pay homage to those spirits. Every time I go back to South East Asia I’m going back in a certain sense to reinforce those spiritualities. I never questioned resolving Sean’s fate - it’s always seemed the right thing to do.

It’s beyond fascinating. Sean went out to Vietnam the first time as a sniper. His father taught him to kill elephants and tigers - he was a serious hunter. Yet by the time he went back to Cambodia he was a proxy Buddhist – he had gone full circle. Errol had left him a couple of shotguns, the pennant from his yacht and $5,000. Lilly did the best she could – she didn’t remarry until Sean was an adult then gave him his grandmother’s flat in Paris and got him jobs in B movies.

So outside of resolving my mate’s fate and that wondering soul business here’s an incredible character who demands his own book. He was turning into an incredible film maker. He lived for a year-and-a-quarter through captivity. We only need two more pieces from the jigsaw puzzle of his fate – one from Cambodia, one from Vietnam.

Does the mission stop? No, because the one thing great about this obsession – seeing his spirit in a cave, following it up and doing a documentary about it – is that out of it came the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation. From that came Requiem [book honouring fellow photojournalists]. And from that the Red Cross anti-personnel mine programs.

What’s the draw of Indochina for you?

How do you explain Graham Greene’s addiction for it? Indochina has something intangible. The people, place, food, the atmosphere, the fact that they’ve been through war and come up the other side of it looking incredible. My career was born there. My life was terminated there. Every time I go back to Indochina I learn more about myself than I do about them.

What’s been your greatest achievement?

Staying alive. I am more than dead lucky to have survived – I was declared DOA twice. When you glimpse possibly what that nexus of life is from those Zen depths it enables you to either piss on it or pluralise it. Every day afterwards is a bonus day.

Publishing Requiem. Honouring my mates. Honouring what I think is a most incredible craft – photo journalism.

After all you’ve seen how do you cope with the mundane?

I’m a happy puppy as long as I’m doing my work with the Red Cross, the homeless and the street kids. I love making images. Even when I go to the supermarket I take a camera. To go into any assignment however mundane, I get excited.

How have you coped with technological change?

 
I got my first digital camera in 2000 and I swore it would never catch on. In 2003 I got my first SLR Digital D60. I didn’t realise its potential or really enjoy it because I’m not very technically minded. But now I’ve been given an all-thinking, all-talking Canon 5D, which is a really awesome piece of kit, and I shoot, in a money-making sense, 70% digital.

However, when I take my film camera, my Leica, out, it’s as if you’ve given me the ultimate tool. With film I take that extra bit of care. One of my major clients is the War Memorial in Canberra and they prefer film. They scan for the record and they actually want to see the negative.

Digital is merely a magnetic impulse. Information sticks on CDs for three years and on DVD for seven – what’s going to happen to these images? Whereas I’m sitting here with images from 1965 which are still in good enough condition that I can print from them in the old fashion way and, if not, scan them and clean them up in Photoshop.

How do you feel about ageing?

 
Now when I walk into an assignment, for example a water sanitation project in Timor, I know what I want to do. The shortcuts to the process of completion are far easier. There’s also something about knowing I can go in to bat and come out with a good score. I’ve been asked by World Vision to document their campaign against child trafficking in Cambodia. That’s an incredible privilege. You can’t give that to a young person – they don’t have the historical perspectives.

You’re described as a mature and thinking photographer with a message. What is that message?

I know the inevitability of endless war. I use a quote from a Bengali philosopher and poet: I subscribe to no living credos. I subscribe only to nature and to the life that lies therein. We have to live with more harmony and more green than we do.

What makes you happy?

Sex. A good book. Travel. But being on the road with an assignment in the pocket is the ultimate.

Read more about Tim Page at www.timpage.com.au.