“Napalm Girl” controversy

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.

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

The organization, which named the image “Photo of the Year” in 1973, announced Friday that it has “suspended” its longstanding attribution to retired Associated Press (AP) photographer Nick Ut. An accompanying report said the “visual and technical” evidence “leans toward” an emerging theory that a Vietnamese freelance photographer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, took the photo.

It is the latest twist in a controversy sparked by “The Stringer,” 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.)

The film contains allegations that Nghe sold his photo to the AP before editors intervened to credit Ut, who was the agency’s staff photographer in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) at the time.

Note that “leans toward” and “allegations” phrasing.

A reconstruction of the scene by Index, based on a “geo-based timeline,” suggested that Ut would have needed to have “taken the photo, run 60 meters (197 feet), and returned calmly, all within a brief window of time,” World Press Photo said. The organization described that scenario as “highly unlikely” though “not impossible.”

The AP, meanwhile, has disputed the 60-meter figure, saying that Ut’s purported position on the highway — which is based on “shaky,” low-resolution footage filmed by a TV cameraman — could have been as little as 32.8 meters away from where the image was captured, and that the photographer “could have been in the position to have taken the shot.”

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.

Earlier this month, the AP published a 96-page report on the matter. The investigation — which was based on eyewitness interviews, examination of cameras, a 3D model of the scene and surviving photo negatives — found “no definitive evidence” to justify changing the attribution. While the agency acknowledged that the passage of time and absence of key evidence made it “impossible to fully prove” whether Ut took the photo, crediting Nghe would “require several leaps of faith.”

World Press Photo also noted the possibility that another person altogether — Vietnamese military photographer Huynh Cong Phuc, who sometimes sold images to news agencies — took the photo. The AP’s investigation noted that he, like Ut and Nghe, “could have been in the position to have taken the shot.”

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.  But I think the most important fact about the photographer is this:

“When 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.”

Ut said he put the injured children in his van and drove them for 30 minutes to a nearby hospital.  CNN

50 years later, photographer and subject:

Category: Vietnam