APOCALYPSE NOW (1976)

In June 1976, I was contacted by Francis Ford Coppola asking if I was interested in working on Apocalypse Now in the Philippines. Of course I was interested. Working with F.F. Coppola and Vittorio Storaro (dir. of Photography) was not an experience to be missed. A week later I was on my way. I assume that I was hired because of my portfolio, which had a section with images I’d taken while I worked as a combat photographer in S. Vietnam and Cambodia. (1968-1970) and in Chile. (1973)

I had no idea what lay ahead of me, but I didn’t care. I loved the tropics and it couldn’t be worse than covering the wars in Indo-China. But guess what? It was! Admittedly, it was a lot safer and better paid, but in S. Vietnam or Cambodia, I didn’t work at night or in the rain. Or in the smoke: smoke against the millions of mosquitoes and other bugs which surrounded the arc lights when we worked at night. Or the nearly constant smoke created for the different moods of Apocalypse Now. (as in the above image) But still, I loved every minute of my six months long ‘Apocalypse Now"experience.

Many of these images are in the photo book ‘‘Apocalypse Now The Lost Photo Archive’