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Chas Gerretsen

Portrait of Chas   Gerretsen

Chas Gerretsen (b. 22 July 1943, Groningen, Netherlands) is a Dutch-born war photographer, cameraman and film advertising photographer whose coverage of the American war on Vietnam and the 1970 crisis in Cambodia caught the eye of movie director Francis Ford Coppola, leading him to become in 1976 the still photographer/​special advisor on the set of acclaimed Apocalypse Now (first released in 1979). His work on significant conflicts such as the military putsch in Chile (1973) and Hollywood celebrity portraits has been featured in major magazines.

Still in his teens, Gerretsen left the Netherlands to wander through Europe, settle briefly (1961−2) in Australia — where he was a hired crocodile hunter in Queensland -, move to California and Texas from 1963, working as a cowboy and shooting his first film footage. In 1967, he headed to Singapore, hitchiked through Malaysia, Thailand, stayed three mionth with a group of Burmese rebels, crossed through Laos and Cambodia and reached South Vietnam in February 1968, during the Tet offensive, working as a freelancer. In 1970, he was in East Pakistan to cover a devastating cyclone, returned briefly to Europe, and in the next five years reported from Cambodia - also as a freelancer while contributing articles to the Copley News Service under the penname of Bill Steiner - , South Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Dominican Republic and Peru. 

 

1) On Da Nang beach in 1969, left to right: UPI reporter Dana Stone (18 Apr.1939, Pomfret, USA — disappeared 6 April 1970, Kompong Cham area, Cambodia), his wife Louise Smizer-Stone, Gerretsen and Danish UPI cameraman Ib Heller. Stone and colleague Sean Flynn were captured by insurgents after leaving Phnom Penh on rented Honda motorbikes. 50 years later, fellow war correspondent Tim Page announced their remains had been found in a grave near Bei Met village, although further forensic investigation asserted otherwise in 2003.[screenshot from Dutch Angle, 2019] 2) The border checkpoint between Cambodia and South Vietnam through which Gerretsen walked in 1969 after finding the fence locked and no one around. [photos by Chas Gerretsen].

 

1) On Da Nang beach in 1969, left to right: UPI reporter Dana Stone (18 Apr.1939, Pomfret, USA — disappeared 6 April 1970, Kompong Cham area, Cambodia), his wife Louise Smizer-Stone, Gerretsen and Danish UPI cameraman Ib Heller. Stone and colleague Sean Flynn were captured by insurgents after leaving Phnom Penh on rented Honda motorbikes. 50 years later, fellow war correspondent Tim Page announced their remains had been found in a grave near Bei Met village, although further forensic investigation asserted otherwise in 2003.[screenshot from Dutch Angle, 2019] 2) The border checkpoint between Cambodia and South Vietnam through which Gerretsen walked in 1969 after finding the fence locked and no one around. [photos by Chas Gerretsen].

1) On Da Nang beach in 1969, left to right: UPI reporter Dana Stone (18 Apr.1939, Pomfret, USA — disappeared 6 April 1970, Kompong Cham area, Cambodia), his wife Louise Smizer-Stone, Gerretsen and Danish UPI cameraman Ib Heller. Stone and colleague Sean Flynn were captured by insurgents after leaving Phnom Penh on rented Honda motorbikes. 50 years later, fellow war correspondent Tim Page announced their remains had been found in a grave near Bei Met village, although further forensic investigation asserted otherwise in 2003.[screenshot from Dutch Angle, 2019] 2) The border checkpoint between Cambodia and South Vietnam through which Gerretsen walked in 1969 after finding the fence locked and no one around. [photos by Chas Gerretsen].

Having joined the French photo agency Gamma in 1972, Gerretsen was in Chile the year after to cover the CIA-backed coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (1915−2006) and on 11 Sept. 1973 took the impacted photo of the dictator with dark shades which became a worldwide symbol of dictatorship’s sinister face. His contribution, recognized with the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award 1973, was honored fifty years later during an official exhibition at Museum of Memory and Human Rights [Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos, est. 2007] in Santiago de Chile, 2023. 

 
 
 

1) On the road from Siem Reap to Angkor, April 1970. 2, 3) Among recruits in the governmental forces were high-school female students who stayed in the city. 4) General Pinochet on the day of his coup d’état, 11 Sept. 1973, Chile. Gerretsen’s photo became the iconic image of a brutal dictatorship that lasted seventeen years. [photos © Chas Gerretsen].

 

1) On the road from Siem Reap to Angkor, April 1970. 2, 3) Among recruits in the governmental forces were high-school female students who stayed in the city. 4) General Pinochet on the day of his coup d’état, 11 Sept. 1973, Chile. Gerretsen’s photo became the iconic image of a brutal dictatorship that lasted seventeen years. [photos © Chas Gerretsen].

1) On the road from Siem Reap to Angkor, April 1970. 2, 3) Among recruits in the governmental forces were high-school female students who stayed in the city. 4) General Pinochet on the day of his coup d’état, 11 Sept. 1973, Chile. Gerretsen’s photo became the iconic image of a brutal dictatorship that lasted seventeen years. [photos © Chas Gerretsen].

He established the Gamma Hollywood office in 1975 and co-founded the photo agency Mega Productions in 1977, one year after being called by Coppola to the set of Apocalypse Now in the Philippines [1], where he stayed for six months. In 2019, he recalled that the formidable movie director bluntly told him — ​“I don’t particularly like you but I like your photography.” It was Gerretsen who suggested to the Coppola to change actor Dennis Hopper​’s role into a crazed photojournalist endlessly carrying around his neck four Nikon F cameras that had belonged to Gerretsen [later kept at Coppola Winery Movie Museum, Geyserville, California].

While portraying Hollywood giants such as Alfred ​‘Hitch’ Hitchcock, Gene Hackman, Joan Collins, Melanie Griffith, Laura Dern or Ben Johnson, and shooting films like California Dreaming (1978, with Tanya Roberts), Gerretsen remained a restless wanderer, living on his sailboat for several years. His leaving of Gamma in the 1990s was contentious — he claimed over 80.000 of his photographic negatives and slides were missing -, and he decided to entrust the Netherlands Photo Museum in Rotterdam with his remaining photo archive already deposited there. 

 

1) Movie director Alfred Hitchcock kissing his bust with actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black watching, California, 1975. [photo © Chas Gerretsen]. 2) With Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976. 3) Detail of the group photo of Apocalypse Now crew sitting on the stairs to Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1976. Bottom left, Gerretsen using a remote to take the shot, with Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Coppola (1936−2024) and husband Francis sitting behind. 4) One of Gerretsen’s haunted set photographs for Apocalypse Now [2,3.4: images from Dutch Angle, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019]. 

 

1) Movie director Alfred Hitchcock kissing his bust with actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black watching, California, 1975. [photo © Chas Gerretsen]. 2) With Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976. 3) Detail of the group photo of Apocalypse Now crew sitting on the stairs to Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1976. Bottom left, Gerretsen using a remote to take the shot, with Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Coppola (1936−2024) and husband Francis sitting behind. 4) One of Gerretsen’s haunted set photographs for Apocalypse Now [2,3.4: images from Dutch Angle, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019]. 

 

1) Movie director Alfred Hitchcock kissing his bust with actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black watching, California, 1975. [photo © Chas Gerretsen]. 2) With Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976. 3) Detail of the group photo of Apocalypse Now crew sitting on the stairs to Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1976. Bottom left, Gerretsen using a remote to take the shot, with Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Coppola (1936−2024) and husband Francis sitting behind. 4) One of Gerretsen’s haunted set photographs for Apocalypse Now [2,3.4: images from Dutch Angle, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019]. 

 

1) Movie director Alfred Hitchcock kissing his bust with actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black watching, California, 1975. [photo © Chas Gerretsen]. 2) With Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976. 3) Detail of the group photo of Apocalypse Now crew sitting on the stairs to Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1976. Bottom left, Gerretsen using a remote to take the shot, with Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Coppola (1936−2024) and husband Francis sitting behind. 4) One of Gerretsen’s haunted set photographs for Apocalypse Now [2,3.4: images from Dutch Angle, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019]. 

1) Movie director Alfred Hitchcock kissing his bust with actors Bruce Dern and Karen Black watching, California, 1975. [photo © Chas Gerretsen]. 2) With Francis Ford Coppola on the set of Apocalypse Now, 1976. 3) Detail of the group photo of Apocalypse Now crew sitting on the stairs to Colonel Kurtz’s compound in Pagsanjan, Laguna, 1976. Bottom left, Gerretsen using a remote to take the shot, with Dennis Hopper, Marlon Brando, Eleanor Coppola (1936−2024) and husband Francis sitting behind. 4) One of Gerretsen’s haunted set photographs for Apocalypse Now [2,3.4: images from Dutch Angle, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019]. 

It is only from 2020 that Chas Gerretsen’s work started to get full recognition, beginning with his work on Apocalypse Now. In 2025, the guarded, unassuming photographer published on his website two series of photographs of his reporting in Siem Reap and Angkor in 1970. About the latter he noted — ​“Distance from Siem Reap to Angkor Wat is 5 km. It took us five hours to get to the temple; we ran into three ambushes (1 K.I.A., 12 W.I.A’s [2]) It took us one hour to get back”. 

Publications

  • Apocalypse Now — The Lost Photo Archive, Munich-London-New York, Prestel Verlag/​Penguin/​Random House, 2021, 130 photos, 256 p. ISBN 978−3−7913−8808−3. | Limited Box Edition (30 copies) [© Chas Gerretsen-Courtesy Zoetrope Corp., texts and photos], Prestel, 2021.
  • [texts by exhibition curator Iris Sikking] Chas Gerrentsen — Starring, Eindhoven, Lecturis Uitgeve, 2021, 256 p. ISBN 978 – 9462264069. [Catalogue published with the retrospective exhibition at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, Netherlands]. [3]
  • [NL] Het wonderbaarlijke en vreemde leven van Chas Gerretsen, Boom, 2021, 320 p. ISBN 978 – 9024434473. [originally written in English as The Marvelous and Strange Life of Chas Gerretsen but not yet published in that version].
  • [SP] Chile — El Archivo Fotográfico 1973 – 74, Editorial RM, Categoría, 2023, 296 p. ISBN: 978−84−19233−62−2. | [ENG] Chile: The Photo Archive 1973 – 74, Lecturis, 2023, 292 p. ISBN: 978 – 9462264847.

References

[1] The movie original script had the action based in Cambodia. Due to the Cambodian civil war, Coppola had to relocate the shooting to the Philippines, with some additional filming in California before Apocalypse Now release in 1979 (Redux version in 2021). Set designers kept many Cambodian elements in the décor, in particular sculptures inspired by Banteay Srei architecture [read more].

[2] ​‘Killed in Action’, ​‘Wounded in Action’.

[3] Title also rendered as Starring Chas Gerentsen.

Main photo: Chas Gerretsen with a Cambodian krama on his shoulders during his interview for Dutch Angle: Chas Gerretsen and Apocalypse Now”, Kino Rotterdam documentary, 2019.