The photographer is the guide, the clown, the fool, providing the balance between Willard and Kurtz. At the film's premiere at Cannes, I saw the confusion begin. But the 35mm release would need end titles. After he was finished filming on the huge set of the Kurtz compound, Coppola was required by the Philippine government to destroy it, and he photographed it being blown up. In the 20th anniversary DVD release, Coppola patiently explains all of this once again.
Most films are lucky to contain a single great sequence.
There is also the sequence where the patrol boat stops a small fishing boat with a family on board. It turns out the girl was running for her puppy. The mother is not quite dead. Willard can't stop him, so he joins him. The great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro shows them as little human specks at the foot of towering trees, and this is a Joseph Conrad moment, showing how nature dwarfs us.