SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
By Benjamin Mullin
The photo is indelible, and its importance unmistakable: a Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, naked and screaming, her arms outstretched in despair. It drove home the consequences of the Vietnam War to readers in the United States, where it won a Pulitzer Prize.
But who took the photo, widely known as Napalm Girl? That is the question dividing the photojournalism community 53 years after it was taken.
The image, from a road in the village of Trang Bang, has been credited to Nick Ut, a photographer who worked for The Associated Press. In the decades since, Ut has repeatedly talked publicly, in interviews and elsewhere, about his role in capturing the photo and his later friendship with its subject, Kim Phuc Phan Thi.
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Nick Ut (centre) and Kim Phuc (left) with the “Napalm Girl” photo in 2022.Credit: AP
Yet, a documentary that premiered this year, The Stringer, set off investigations into the creator of the image. The film argues that a freelance photographer took the image and that an AP photo editor misattributed it to Ut.
On Friday, the World Press Photo Foundation, a prominent international non-profit, weighed in. It said that a months-long investigation had found that two other photojournalists “may have been better positioned to take the photograph than Nick Ut”, and it was suspending his credit for the image. That means the credit and caption in its online archives will be updated to include the doubts raised by its investigation.
Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, has repeatedly disputed the film’s claims and called them “defamatory”. He said in a statement that the World Press Photo decision was “deplorable and unprofessional” and “reveals how low the organisation has fallen”. Hornstein declined to make Ut available for an interview.
The AP, after spending nearly a year investigating, said this month that it would continue to credit the photo to Ut. A lengthy report from the investigation said he was in position to take the photo and cites evidence to support that position, but concluded that no proof had been found. It also says other photographers were in position to take the photo, but there’s no proof they did, either.
“As our report explains in great detail, there’s simply not enough hard evidence or fact to remove the credit from Nick Ut, and it’s impossible for anyone to know with certainty how exactly things played out on the road in the space of a few minutes over half a century ago,” said Derl McCrudden, the AP’s vice president and head of global news production.
The controversy over the photo, officially titled The Terror of War, began when The Stringer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January. The film, directed by Bao Nguyen, followed Gary Knight, a journalist, as he investigated a claim from a former AP photo editor, Carl Robinson, who said he was ordered to misattribute the photo to Ut in 1972. The end of the film shows Knight writing a message claiming that Nguyen Thanh Nghe, a freelance photographer, took the photo.
In an interview for this article, Nguyen said: “People need to have an open mind, need to see the film and all of the forensic reports and judge for themselves where the truth lies in this story.”
Terrified children, including nine-year-old Kim Phuc (centre), run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972.Credit: AP
The attention given to the film produced a quick and immediate pushback from Ut’s lawyer. It also led the AP to release an earlier report in the days leading up to the premiere, saying: “The AP has no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.”
The AP took a closer look at the issue after reviewing the film. The much longer report, released this month, reconstructed the scene using satellite imagery and photos on file from the day.
But both Ut’s lawyer and the filmmakers behind The Stringer said the AP report had bolstered their arguments. Knight said the filmmakers were “more confident after the AP report that our reporting is strong and reliable than even before”. Hornstein said in an interview that the report “makes quite clear that the film, which calls itself a documentary, fails to meet documentary film standards”.
“Both AP reports list very strong evidence that Nick Ut took the photo, including every eyewitness on the road that day other than Mr Nghe,” Hornstein said. He added that living eyewitnesses from AP offices and written testimony by now-deceased AP staff members also supported Ut’s credit.
Associated Press photojournalist Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for the haunting image.Credit: AP
The filmmakers behind The Stringer are updating the film to incorporate new developments. They’re also in negotiations for worldwide distribution.
Even though World Press Photo was acknowledging doubts about who took the photo, the organisation was not stripping The Terror of War of its photo of the year award, which it conferred in 1973, its CEO, Joumana El Zein Khoury, said in an interview. (Christiaan Triebert, a visual investigations reporter at The New York Times, contributed to the review as an independent analyst.)
To remove the award, Khoury said, the organisation would have to be sure Ut did not take the photo, a conclusion that was impossible to reach all these years later.
“While this may not be a perfect solution,” she said, “I think it’s a thoughtful and principled one.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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