|
|
 |
| Sunday, 17 March 2002 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Reality frozen in time by Vimukthi Fernando and Jayanthi Liyanage
The Mindful Moment, is essentially the result of war and makes the reader mindful of the "whiteness, paleness and desolateness" of life. The three beautifully and sensitively-phrased chapters, "Road", "Quest" and "Passage", and 136 entrancing photographs set out three areas of his life - pre-war, shaken-to-the-core in war and more-shaken in post-war. Page co-edited with Horst Faas the book, Requiem, featuring the work of all the photographers killed during the Indochinese wars between 1945 and 1975. It won nine awards in 1987. "War is not beautiful but Requiem is a truly beautiful thing, like a symphony," he says. A magnetic personality, with a philosophy imperatively Buddhist. Towering, over six feet and with a smile lighting up his eyes, he greets us. War had played a vital part in his life - bringing fame and nearly claiming his life twice. Perhaps it is this familiarity of war, which had sprouted his attitude of exuberance in life. A conqueror, but not without scars from the battle - his purpose of life, opening the eyes of the world to that 'mindful moment' all of us are called to face, is Tim Page, the photojournalist who won world fame for his war coverage during the Vietnam War. "There is a privilege in being raised in a time of peace. A luxury that your life is not under immediate threat. War is labelled heroic, patriotic, nationalistic. There is a cause - just and right - and it excuses all the pain and all the loss", says Tim Page. "There is always a lull afterwards, a time of shortage for the losers, a time of relative plenty for the victors. Yet no one has really won, for conflict doesn't rage for people's rights or causes but to boost the profits of aerospace and defence corporations. It is those at the receiving and perpetrating ends who really suffer, who suffer the worst indignities that a human being can bring upon his fellow human. "We take all this for granted - until the brutal reality of war arrives on our own doorstep. Some of us choose to go and find it, to observe and record man's most perverted moments." So Page returned some 30-odd times, with near-religious fervour, to the post-war Indochina. This resulted in his eighth stunning photojournalistic publication, the Mindful Moment, published by Thames and Hudson, London. "Photography is about the magic moment. One picture is worth a million words - and a billion pictures" reflects Page. That is what 'stops' him in Sri Lanka, on way home after nine weeks spent in Indochina - teaching journalism and shooting 250 rolls of film and videos - the opportunity to capture a few more of those 'magic moments'. "My first visit to Sri Lanka was to last a week, but I ended up spending three weeks here," he reminiscences. The assignment was to get photographs for a tour-guide. Repeated visits lasting 11 months, during 1982/83 resulted in the portrayal of a lifestyle "revolving around Poya." And now, 20 years after falling in love with Sri Lanka he sees three essential elements governing its lifestyle prompting him to use the working title - 'A political saffron - Sri Lanka revisited.' He managed to capture it "just the other day, near the temple in Colpetty", he tells us. "A monk with a mobile phone, a soldier with a machine gun and an elephant!" He intends to re-capture places he visited the previous time and include the social changes photographing war victims, soldiers, children and refugees. Just a couple of days ago, Page was on a vehicle from Maha Oya in East to Chenkaladi up North, after seven years. "The road had elephant dung and was overgrown with wild jungle. It's still being de-mined. Afterwards, we smoked cigarettes like crazy," Page remarks. "In Southern Ho Chi Ming, they are still de-mining the 30% land-mines which had not exploded in Vietnam war. It's good to see peace coming to Sri Lanka." Our discussion drifts towards war coverage, back to his days in Vietnam. "Vietnam was the first and only war covered with total freedom" says Page. Though technology developed, so were the red-tape preventing 'news' reaching the masses. However, "one photograph of a human moment in time of conflict could become an icon, an anti-war statement." But, the question remains, how to find that moment? "It's like looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You only see a rainbow outside of the rainbow. You run to it - there is nothing. It's a refraction." Page was born when World War II was raising the see-saw for the Allies, he tells us. When he came to the Lao capital, Vientiane, on a USAID mission, at the height of US military expansionism, he was barely out of his teens. "I became a photographer by accident," Page says. "When my buddy, Martin at United Press International (UPI), went to Tokyo on six-weeks-training in 1964, I was the UPI stringer. The reward for sparse filings and updates on the Laos conflict was a hundred bucks and a Pentax 35mm camera and both have formed a life raft since." In Saigon, Page shared a flat with Sean Flynn (the son of Errol) who was to him "like a brother in the love of photography and life on the edge. The dude in the hole next to you, especially one under incoming fire, is closer than blood." In 1970, Sean disappeared without a trace, on assignment in Cambodia, where Page was to return later to uncover the gory details of his mate's fate at the hands of Khmer Rouge. "We had promised to tell each other's mothers if something happened to either one of us," Page said. When does he plan to publish his new book on Sri Lanka? "By end of 2003" he tells us. In between there would be more visits and mounds of photographs to select from. "Come, travel with me when I come back," Page invites us on parting. "Then you will understand my madness." |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
"Travellers are among the most privileged people. Transcending
frontiers religious, physical and political constitutes the ultimate
learning curve. At best, we gain enlightenment; most get by without ever
having more than a few mindful moments." - Tim Page For his harrowing
photographs bringing the horrific reality of conflict in Cambodia, Vietnam
and Laos to an ingenue world, Page the photojournalist from Kent, U.K. has
won universal acclaim. Just eighteen when he first covered the war, his
images have been published, broadcast and exhibited worldwide, receiving
numerous awards and providing thoughtful fodder for several books and
films.
His books include The Mindful Moment, Tim Page's Nam, Ten Years After :
Vietnam Today, Page after Page (his autobiography), Mid-Term Report and
Sri Lanka - a co-publication of Thames and Hudson and Lake House, Sri
Lanka.
