NYT piece on Al Rockoff.

[Carl Robinson]

A couple friends have put up this weekend's NYT's feature story on our Cambodian colleague Al Rockoff by Graham Bowley who spent four days with him in Florida. (Can you imagine that?! ha ha)   The story is essentially how a couple guys who were gonna help him start of website for his photos, maybe even get a book out (his perennial dream), have apparently screwed him and he's lost all his negatives.  (See full story below.) 

Now, of course, I knew Rockoff personally but I must take great exception to this particular paragraph that the AP stopped buying his photos.  That is not rpt not correct and, as you know, I worked in the AP Saigon Photos where we processed the footage from Cambodia and we always bought whatever we could from Al Rockoff.  But quite frankly - and I'll say this for the record - a lot of his photos were out of focus and badly composed.  But as I say, we always did what we could to help him and other photo stringers out, including that army of Cambodian freelancers.  

After Rockoff’s discharge in 1973, he returned to Cambodia, where he developed a reputation for smoking pot and taking risks while photographing the brutal civil war for The Times and others as a freelancer. Some colleagues viewed Rockoff as dangerously reckless.   After Rockoff’s discharge in 1973, he returned to Cambodia, where he developed a reputation for smoking pot and taking risks while photographing the brutal civil war for The Times and others as a freelancer.  The Associated Press stopped buying his work, convinced the images were not worth the calamity Rockoff seemed intent on hurtling toward.

Finally, I have always done my best to like Al Rockoff but reckon his irascibility was his own worst enemy, plus smoking way too much dope.  (Everything within limits, I've always believed.)   He often seemed to be rejecting our offers of friendship both then and later. And some of that does come across in this article.

At the same time, after talking to everyone else, including an 'expert' from the high-fallutin' academic place in London, you'd think Graham Bowley would've at least tracked some of us Vietnam Old Hacks down for our thoughts and comments. 

A War Photographer for Whom the Battle Continues - The New York Times

Carl 

 

  

 

[Bill Hayton]

"an 'expert' from the high-fallutin' academic place in London”

Dr. Steve Heder has been involved in research and other professional activities on Southeast Asia and China since the 1970s. After graduating from Cornell with a BA in Asia Studies in 1973, he was a journalist in Cambodia during the latter years of the 1970-75 war there, and then reported from Thailand, Laos, and Taiwan. In 1978, he earned a master’s degree in Government at Cornell. During 1979-83, he did research from the Thailand-Cambodia border and inside Cambodia on the political and military situation there, with funding from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State. He was also a fellow at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. Starting in 1984, he began working in the human rights field, and has since done so for a total of ten years at the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Amnesty International, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch, contributing to research and advocacy related to Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, and China. He was a Deputy Director of the Information and Education Division of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (1992-1993). He has been involved in the work of the Documentation Center of Cambodia on Khmer Rouge crimes and worked in various capacities for the UN-assisted Khmer Rouge Tribunal for nine years. In 1999, he obtained a doctorate degree in Politics at the London School of Oriental and African Studies and taught comparative South East Asian politics there between 1996 and 2012. Thereafter, as a Research Associate, he has done supervision of SOAS PhD students on subjects related to the politics and international relations of Southeast Asia and China. He is also a member of the Board of the Center for Khmer Studies.

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[Carl Robinson]

Wow!  And for all that, Heder got this graf.   Hurray!   And I stand by my point about the NYT not contacting the rest of us.

“Al was a complicated figure, clearly much traumatized by his immersion in combat in Vietnam,” said Stephen Heder, an expert on Cambodia at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, who met him in Phnom Penh.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/vietnam-old-hacks/5B8374BB-A09D-44E8-97E1-E75EC38A519C%40gmail.com.