Famous yet unknown photographer Hubert van Es dies

The quintessential image of the fall of Saigon was made by a Dutch photographer who died Friday.

Famous war photographs are often staged. Those muddy American soldiers raising the American flag on the Japanese island Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean? Staged. Those Russian soldiers raising the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag in Berlin in May 1945? Staged.

Not so the picture that came to symbolise the final American defeat in Vietnam in 1975. It is authentic and it was made by the Dutch photographer Hubert van Es, who died in Hong Kong on Friday from a stroke at age 67. Van Es made the picture while he was working for the American press agency UPI, for whom he covered Vietnam for years.

The picture shows unbridled chaos and panic among many South Vietnamese who were in the employ of the Americans. They are desperately trying to secure a seat on one of the last American helicopters shuttling between Saigon rooftops and US navy ships off the coast of Vietnam ahead of the arrival of the communist North-Vietnamese troops. The ladder leading up to the roof already has more people on it that can fit on the helicopter, and everybody knows it.

Van Es was one of the few Western journalists who stayed in Saigon to meet the Vietcong guerrillas and North-Vietnamese regular troops as they conquered the capital of South Vietnam. For a very long time, Van Es' picture was wrongly captioned as showing the roof of the US embassy in Saigon.

In 2005, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Van Es explained what happened to The New York Times. The roof is that of the Pittman apartment complex, which everybody knew housed a lot of top CIA people. When helicopters belonging to Air America, a CIA cover organisation, started to evacuate people from the Pittman's roof, a crowd of Vietnamese quickly gathered. The wrong caption was due to an editing mistake by UPI's Tokyo bureau.

As Van Es filed his pictures - it took twelve minutes per negative at the time - more and more people gathered to wait for more helicopters to show up. None did. As the enemy entered the city, Van Es himself put on a helmet with the words "Boa Chi Hoa Lan" (Dutch press) on it, hoping this would give him some protection. The young North-Vietnamese soldiers turned out to be quite friendly. Probably they were just as amazed as Van Es to be finally facing the enemy. Van Es himself later escaped the post-war chaos on board a cargo plane.

Van Es started his career working for a number of Dutch photo agencies and a local newspaper, Rotterdams Nieuwsdblad. In 1967 he moved to Asia to try his luck there. He photographed the Hong Kong riots for the Associated Press that year, and settled there. Later he would photograph the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and other major events. Lately, he was finding it difficult to get assignments.

His one famous picture didn't make Van Es rich: all the royalties went to UPI, which owned the copyright to his pictures.