Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Famous English photographer meets accident in Vietnam

Tuesday, 14/09/2010
Vietnam Net

VietNamNet Bridge – Tim Page, 67, an English photographer who made his name during the Vietnam War and is now based in Brisbane, Australia, met an accident in Vietnam on September 12.


According to witnesses, he missed his footing and felt, resulted in broken pelvis in front of a hotel in Hanoi. He was immediately brought to the SOS International hospital in Hanoi for first aid and then Thailand for treatment.

Page had just finished a training course for Vietnamese photographers in Hanoi when he got the accident.

Page left England in 1962 making his way overland driving through Europe, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand and Laos. He found work as an agricultural advisor for USAID. He began work as a press photographer in Laos stringing for UPI and AFP. His exclusive photographs of an attempted coup d'état in Laos in 1965 for UPI got him a staff position in the Saigon bureau of the news agency. He is celebrated for his work as a freelance accredited press photographer in Vietnam and Cambodia during the 1960s.


In the 1970s Page worked as a freelance photographer for music magazines like Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone. During his recovery in the spring of 1970 he learnt of the capture of his best friend, roommate and fellow photo-journalist Sean Flynn in Cambodia. Throughout the 70s and 80s he tried to discover Flynn's fate and final resting place and wanted to erect a memorial to all those in the media that either were killed or went missing in the war. This led him to found the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation and was the genesis for the book Requiem. His quest to clear up the mystery of Flynn's fate continues: as late as 2009, he was back in Cambodia still searching for the site of Flynn's remains.

Page's book Requiem contains photographs taken by all of the photographers and journalists killed during the wars against the Japanese, French and Americans. Requiem is now also a photographic exhibition in Vietnam's War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.

Page is the subject of many documentaries and two films and the author of many books. He lives in Brisbane, Australia now and no longer covers wars. He is Adjunct Professor of Photojournalism at Griffith University.

Tim Page and some world famous photographers often organize training courses for Vietnamese photographers.

PV

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