A famed Tunbridge Wells-born war photographer, who found fame covering the Vietnam War, has died at 78.
Born in the town in 1944, Tim Page was brought up by adoptive parents in Orpington, but later resided in Australia.
He only discovered he was adopted at six years old, when he learned his biological father had died in a torpedo attack on an Arctic convoy during World War II, according to his obituary in The Telegraph
He left home with a camera at 17 and ended up in Laos in 1963, before being sent to Vietnam by United Press International (UPI).
His jaded, drug-taking, risk-taking persona in the war zone led to his portrayal by Dennis Hopper in ‘Apocalypse Now’ as a manic photojournalist who admires the brutal Colonel Kurtz who has gone rogue in the jungle.
Despite this portrayal, Mr Page displayed notable empathy for soldiers, both in the field and later in their post-war lives.
He was also a patron of Mine Action Group and is said to have stated: “The only good war photograph is an anti-war photograph.”
Meanwhile, his finest work is considered to be ‘Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina’ (1997), a memorial to 135 photographers recorded missing or killed between the height of the French Indochina War in the 1950s and the fall of Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975.
Mr Page also covered conflicts in Israel, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
He died on August 24, at Bellingen, south of Brisbane in Australia.
