[1][2] He did not know his birth mother; his biological father was killed in a torpedo attack in the Arctic while serving in the Royal Navy during World War II and Page was put up for adoption after he was born.

[2] Page was raised in Orpington,[3] and left England in 1962 to make his way overland driving through Europe, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand and Laos.

[2] Page began work as a press photographer in Laos stringing for UPI and AFP, having taught himself photography.

[4] His exclusive photographs of an attempted coup d'état in Laos in 1965 for UPI got him a staff position in the Saigon bureau of the news agency.

He is celebrated for his work as a freelance accredited press photographer in Vietnam and Cambodia during the 1960s, also finding time to cover the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967.

In Dispatches, Michael Herr wrote of Page as the most "extravagant" of the "wigged-out crazies running around Vietnam", due in most respects to the amount of drugs that he enjoyed taking.

[9] In 1965, shortly after Page got his first publication in Life magazine, Beryl Fox was filming The Mills of the Gods: Vietnam for the CBC series Document.

The first, in September 1965, was in Chu Lai where he was struck by shrapnel in the legs and stomach;[13][14] the second was in Da Nang during the 1966 Buddhist riots, where he received more shrapnel wounds to the head, back, and arms;[3][15] the third in August 1966 happened in the South China sea, where he was on board the Coast Guard cutter Point Welcome, when it was mistaken for a Viet Cong ship, and U.S. Air Force pilots strafed the vessel, leaving Page adrift at sea with over two hundred wounds.

During recovery he became closely involved with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and worked as a caregiver for amputees, traumatically shocked and stressed young men.

In January 1973 Page spent time with Bill Cardoso and Hunter S. Thompson, who was covering Super Bowl VII.

Page photographed Thompson riding a Black Shadow Motorbike, but Rolling Stone lost the negatives.

[23] During Page's recovery in the spring of 1970 he learnt of the capture of his best friend, roommate and fellow photo-journalist Sean Flynn in Cambodia.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s he tried to discover Flynn's fate and final resting place and wanted to erect a memorial to all those in the media who either were killed or went missing in the war.

This led him to found the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation and was the genesis for the book Requiem, co-edited with fellow Vietnam War photographer Horst Faas.

[2][14] Requiem has become since early 2000 a travelling photographic exhibition placed under the custody of the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film.