Photograph by Hubert Van Es/Bettman - CorbisThe maker of an iconic photograph died yesterday. Hubert Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist working for UPI who covered the Vietnam War, and took one of the best-known images during the Fall of Saigon in 1975 — died in Hong Kong on Friday, May 15, 2009. He was 67.
Until I read this page I was convinced, and would have described the image as US citizens and staff of the American Embassy getting into a helicopter on the roof. However, Van Es said it was actually an apartment building for the employees of the United States Agency for International Development, its top floor reserved for the Central Intelligence Agency's deputy chief of station. The address was 22 Gia Long Street, not the embassy. And the people on the ladder were Vietnamese and not American.
It was shot with a 300mm lens from half a mile away. He shot 10 frames, then went to the dark room and processed them and transmitted the image via telegraph to Tokyo. One 5x7 print with a caption took 12 minutes to transmit. And I complain when loading images off the CF card into Lightroom takes too long... :)
Mike
Mike Wood Photography
No comments:
Post a Comment