Academic

Dith Pran: New York Times Photojournalist

By propertyprof

This morning's New York Times brings the sad news that Dith Pran, the photographer portrayed in the 1984 movie The Killing Fields has passed away, at age 65, in Woodbridge, New Jersey.  His obituary is a compelling story, detailing his harrowing life in southeast Asia, especially after the Khmer Rouge controlled Cambodia.  (Dith Pran , ?Killing Fields? Photographer, Dies at 65)  It's an amazing story of resilience and humanity amidst the most horrific of circumstances. 

Dith worked with Sydney H. Schanberg, a Times correspondent and

Mr. Schanberg wrote about Mr. Dith in newspaper articles and in The New York Times Magazine, in a 1980 cover article titled ?The Death and Life of Dith Pran.?  (A book by the same title appeared in 1985.)   The story became the basis of the movie ?The Killing Fields.?The film, directed by Roland Joffé, portrayed Mr. Schanberg, played by Sam Waterston, arranging for Mr. Dith?s wife and children to be evacuated from Phnom Penh as danger mounted. Mr. Dith, portrayed by Dr. Haing S. Ngor (who won an Academy Award as best supporting actor), insisted on staying in Cambodia with Mr. Schanberg to keep reporting the news.

But after Dith saved Schanberg, Dith was sent to a rural labor camp.

For years there was no news of Mr. Dith, except for a false rumor that he had been fed to alligators. His brother had been. After more than four years of beatings, backbreaking labor and a diet of a tablespoon of rice a day, Mr. Dith, on Oct. 3, 1979, escaped over the Thai border. Mr. Schanberg flew to greet him.

This paragraph I found particularly moving:

Having learned French at school and taught himself English, Mr. Dith was hired as a translator for the United States Military Assistance Command. When Cambodia severed ties with the United States in 1965, he worked with a British film crew, then as a hotel receptionist.

Ah, what a reminder that people with astonishing gifts and resilience are found in many, many  places.  We have been fortunate to have been the beneficiary of Mr. Dith's talents.  We also ought to remember that there are many other people, who have much to contribute, whose names we will never know.  It's often by reading obituaries that I recall this lesson.

Alfred Brophy

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 30, 2008 (boomark / email).