GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE:
So, the movie “ARGO” won the Oscar award for Best Picture…and NOT ONE CREDIT to the lone photojournalist who brought to the world the only photographs of the events as they unfolded. Shameful loss that I want to correct RIGHT NOW, RIGHT HERE.
The man’s name was: Adrianus Van Helfteren.
Only two journalists were allowed to remain in Iran, both were Dutch nationals, because technically The Netherlands was neutral.
Adrianus was the photojournalist. The other Dutchman’s name I do not know, but he was the script journalist.
I am not sure which agency they worked for, my memory suggests UPI, but it might have been Reuters….
Adrianus also covered, from onboard, the first flight of Concord, the French Mach-2 supersonic jetliner on its maiden voyage from Paris to Sydney.
Adrianus was a regular on “Fleet Street,” and there ought to be many there who remember him.
Adrianus was employed, he told me, by the British Museum to photograph its “King Tut” exhibit. The museum did not respond to my request for documentation of his photographs. But Adrianus told me with amusement that often times he would put certain exhibit pieces in his pocket and take them home with him on the Metro to his own studio, which he favored over the British Museum photo studio… Adrianus also photographed the masterworks of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg for the British Museum, where he was almost arrested for spraying baby powder on the paintings to eliminate points of “glint” from reflected light.
Adrianus made a good living in England as a food photographer, and school photographer. The chefs didn’t like it that Adrianus would spray their works of art with olive oil to make the food “come alive” for the photos.
His son, Janus Van Helfteren, is a photographer in England to the present day. Janus told me Adrianus died some years ago from emphysema. He was a good man, and much motivated by conscience.
After a nervous breakdown in Iran…his life was under constant daily threat as every night he would develop the day’s film in the bathroom, and send it out by courier, Adrianus went to Thailand where he, AND HE ALONE, photographed the Cambodian/Pol Pot refugee camps – another debt humanity owes to Mr. Van Helfteren. His son, Janus, told me that the head of Iranian security saved his life by insisting Adrianus leave immediately and fly out – because the next day he was scheduled for death. It’s good to have friends in the right place at the right time.
I roomed with Adrianus in New Jersey for about a year where he arrived the long way around, teaching English in Japan, hopping to San Fransisco, then to New York, where I met him. He worked in New Jersey as a gilder at an art store in the town (or city) of Plainfield before finally returning to The Netherlands where he spent the last years of his life with family.
Adrianus Van Helfteren’s the name; have camera, will travel.
Let it be known. Set the record straight.
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