Hubert van Es (6 July 1941 – 15 May 2009) was a Dutch

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

and

photojournalist Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...

who took the well-known photo on 29 April 1975, which shows

South Vietnamese South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...

civilians scrambling to board a

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

Air America

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

during the U.S. evacuation of Saigon. The picture was taken a day before the

Fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Saigon, the capital of ...

. Van Es was variously known in his working life as "Hu", the anglicized "Hugh" and the nickname "Vanes", to rhyme with "planes".

Early life

Hubert van Es was born in

Hilversum Hilversum () is a city and municipality in the province of North Holland, Netherlands. Located in the heart of the Gooi, it is the largest urban centre in that area. It is surrounded by heathland, woods, meadows, lakes, and smaller towns. Hilvers ...

, the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. He moved to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

in 1967, where he initially worked as a freelancer, before joining the ''

South China Morning Post The ''South China Morning Post'' (''SCMP''), with its Sunday edition, the ''Sunday Morning Post'', is a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper owned by Alibaba Group. Founded in 1903 by Tse Tsan-tai and Alfred Cunningham, it has remained ...

'' as chief photographer.

Career in Vietnam

Hubert van Es went to Vietnam in 1968, where he worked for

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

as a sound man. He later joined the

Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...

photo staff in Saigon from 1969 to 1972 and then covered the last three years of the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

, from 1972 to 1975, for

United Press International United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ...

(UPI). In 1975 he was working in Saigon for UPI. He remained in the city for as long as possible before its occupation by

North Vietnamese North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; vi, Việt Nam Dân chủ Cộng hòa), was a socialist state supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) in Southeast Asia that existed f ...

troops. On 29 April 1975 he had taken pictures of Saigonese burning documents that could associate them with the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

as well as a picture of a

Marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

confronting a Vietnamese mother and her little boy. Later that day, he took his famous picture: When North Vietnamese troops arrived, Van Es wore a

camouflage Camouflage is the use of any combination of materials, coloration, or illumination for concealment, either by making animals or objects hard to see, or by disguising them as something else. Examples include the leopard's spotted coat, the ...

hat bearing a small plastic

Dutch flag The national flag of the Netherlands ( nl, de Nederlandse vlag) is a horizontal tricolour of red, white, and blue. The current design originates as a variant of the late 16th century orange-white-blue '' Prinsenvlag'' ("Prince's Flag"), evolv ...

printed with the Vietnamese words ''Báo chí Hà Lan'' ("Dutch Press"). The building in the photo, which has been incorrectly identified as the

US Embassy, Saigon The United States Embassy in Saigon was first established in June 1952, and moved into a new building in 1967 and eventually closed in 1975. The embassy was the scene of a number of significant events of the Vietnam War, most notably the Viet Co ...

since the 1970s, was not labeled as such by Van Es. He has stated that he wrote, for the caption of his photograph, that the helicopter was taking evacuees off the roof of a CIA building in downtown Saigon (

22 Gia Long Street 22 Gia Long Street (, ), now 22 Lý Tự Trọng Street (), is an apartment building in Ho Chi Minh City (also known as Saigon), the largest city in Vietnam. In 1975, photojournalist Hubert van Es, working for UPI, captured an iconic photo of U ...

). At United Press International's (UPI) Tokyo office, someone changed the caption to include the false reference to the "U.S. embassy." Although van Es attempted to have the caption corrected, his efforts proved futile and he eventually gave up. The iconic location's current address is 22 Lý Tự Trọng Street (named after Lý Tự Trọng, a 17-year-old communist executed by the French) and visitors are allowed access to the roof by taking the elevator to the 9th floor.

Later career

Van Es covered the

Insurgency in the Philippines The civil conflict in the Philippines as of February 2019, consists of an insurgency pitting government forces against Maoist rebels, that began in 1969 during the rule of Ferdinand Marcos. *the communist rebellion in the Philippines *the Mor ...

and the

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. He attempted to return to

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

but was not able to do so until 1990. Upon his return to Vietnam, while visiting the countryside, he was quoted as remarking: "It ietnamhasn't really changed since I was last here; but our photos changed the views of those who were lucky enough not to witness this terrible war."

Death

On 15 May 2009, Van Es died in Queen Mary Hospital,

, at the age of 67 from a

haemorrhagic stroke Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as cerebral bleed, intraparenchymal bleed, and hemorrhagic stroke, or haemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. It is one kind of bleed ...

. He had lived in Hong Kong since the end of the

References

External links

Hugh Van Es dies at 67; Dutch photojournalist took famous Saigon evacuation photo
Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2009
Bangkok 2002 Reunion Photo Gallery (Van Es is pictured)

NY Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

Published: April 29, 2005
Vietnam War photographer Van Es dies
UPI May 15, 2009 at 9:20 AM * {{DEFAULTSORT:Es, Hubert 1941 births 2009 deaths 1975 in Vietnam People from Hilversum People of the Vietnam War Photography in Vietnam War photographers Dutch photojournalists