{"id":169737,"date":"2025-05-20T07:00:31","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T11:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=169737"},"modified":"2025-05-19T13:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T17:42:14","slug":"napalm-girl-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=169737","title":{"rendered":"“Napalm Girl” controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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You would think that the provenance of a fifty-year old photo would have been laid to rest long since, especially if it was a photo which not only won a Pulitzer Prize but became the iconic face of civilian tragedy in war, wouldn’t you? Seems you would be mistaken. World Press Photo is claiming the generally accepted photographer is, in fact, not.<\/p>\n

“The Terror of War” is a black and white photo of refugees running down the road, often referred to as “Napalm Girl”\u00a0 due to the naked, severely burned young girl who is central to the image.<\/p>\n

The organization, which named the image \u201cPhoto of the Year\u201d in 1973, announced Friday that it has \u201csuspended\u201d its longstanding attribution to retired Associated Press (AP) photographer Nick Ut. An accompanying report said the \u201cvisual and technical\u201d evidence \u201cleans toward\u201d an emerging theory that a Vietnamese freelance photographer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, took the photo.<\/p>\n

It is the latest twist in a controversy sparked by \u201cThe Stringer,\u201d a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January claiming Nghe, not Ut, captured the iconic photo of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. Nghe was one of more than a dozen people stationed at a highway checkpoint outside the village of Trang Bang on June 8, 1972, as 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc and other villagers were mistaken for the enemy and bombarded by the South Vietnamese air force. (A year later, Ut won the Pulitzer Prize for the picture.)<\/p>\n

The film contains allegations that Nghe sold his photo to the AP before editors intervened to credit Ut, who was the agency\u2019s staff photographer in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) at the time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Note that “leans toward” and “allegations” phrasing.<\/p>\n

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A reconstruction of the scene by Index, based on a \u201cgeo-based timeline,\u201d suggested that Ut would have needed to have \u201ctaken the photo, run 60 meters (197 feet), and returned calmly, all within a brief window of time,\u201d World Press Photo said. The organization described that scenario as \u201chighly unlikely\u201d though \u201cnot impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AP, meanwhile, has disputed the 60-meter figure, saying that Ut\u2019s purported position on the highway \u2014 which is based on \u201cshaky,\u201d low-resolution footage filmed by a TV cameraman \u2014 could have been as little as 32.8 meters away from where the image was captured, and that the photographer \u201ccould have been in the position to have taken the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Seems like a lot of weasel wording… purported, suggested, could have… A lot of the case revolves around indications that Nghe used the brand of camera, Pentax, which they say took the shot. Ut primarily used higher dollar Leica and Nikons – but says he also used Pentaxes and there are photos on file in which he did use a Pentax.<\/p>\n

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Earlier this month, the AP published a 96-page report on the matter. The investigation \u2014 which was based on eyewitness interviews, examination of cameras, a 3D model of the scene and surviving photo negatives \u2014 found \u201cno definitive evidence\u201d to justify changing the attribution. While the agency acknowledged that the passage of time and absence of key evidence made it \u201cimpossible to fully prove\u201d whether Ut took the photo, crediting Nghe would \u201crequire several leaps of faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

World Press Photo also noted the possibility that another person altogether \u2014 Vietnamese military photographer Huynh Cong Phuc, who sometimes sold images to news agencies \u2014 took the photo. The AP\u2019s investigation noted that he, like Ut and Nghe, \u201ccould have been in the position to have taken the shot.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I am certainly no expert on cameras of ANY sort – give me the world’s best camera and view, and I will produce a snapshot.\u00a0 But I think the most important fact about the photographer is this:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhen I took the photo of her, I saw that her body was burned so badly, and I wanted to help her right away. I put all my camera gear down on the highway and put water on her body.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ut said he put the injured children in his van and drove them for 30 minutes to a nearby hospital.\u00a0 CNN<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

50 years later, photographer and subject:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You would think that the provenance of a fifty-year old photo would have been laid to … “Napalm Girl” controversy<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}