Who Toook the Well-known Vietnam War Picture?

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aigon, Vietnam, June 8, 1972. Just earlier than dawn, a small group of newsmen slid into fight fatigues and safari jackets earlier than slipping by the waking metropolis in a convoy of vans and rental automobiles. As they sped northwest, they snaked previous legions of individuals looking for refuge, a silent cortege of poverty and distress. Burdened with all they may carry and cradling youngsters of their arms, the civilians shaped an incredible river of sorrow flowing south because the newsmen scurried north for his or her rendezvous with the conflict.

The journalists had been racing some 30 miles to a city referred to as Trảng Bàng, to cowl the third day of a North Vietnamese offensive in opposition to the South Vietnamese military. For many of the them, the day would finish as routinely because it had begun. Once there, the journalists loitered on the highway and waited; they smoked, talked, checked gear, then smoked and talked some extra. It was shaping as much as be one other unexceptional day in an already decade-long conflict — 99 % ready, one % motion. Among the group had been a number of South Vietnamese navy photographers, together with a educated cinematographer and photographer who generally freelanced for native press to complement his meager wage. Sometime round noon, he noticed a white flare drop in town and shouted to his colleagues that an airstrike was incoming. 

Two South Vietnamese A-1 Skyraiders launched a stick of napalm canisters, which cascaded like airborne baguettes onto the primrose-yellow Cao Đài temple. But the bombers hit the flawed goal. The pilots incinerated their very own troopers and a bunch of girls and kids who had been looking for sanctuary from the conflict in a spot of prayer. 

The village of Trảng Bàng exploded in fireplace and was consumed by black smoke. Soon the group of girls and kids, napalm on their garments and burning into their pores and skin, fled from the scorching temple, bolted by a discipline, turned onto Highway 1 headed southeast, and raced towards the road of males — troops from the military that had simply bombed them and the group of journalists dressed like troopers.

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Alan Downes, a cameraman with Independent Television News, was on his knees. He informed a colleague he couldn’t movie what was occurring earlier than his lens, but he managed to compose himself and seize the ache. He targeted on the kids in his viewfinder: a nine-year-old woman named Phan Thị Kim Phúc and 4 others, operating towards his rolling digital camera, screaming.

Kim Phúc, her brothers, and her cousins ran previous Downes, who was with two different TV crews and a stills photographer — six males lined up throughout a two-lane freeway, filming the kids as they approached. In a fraction of a second, a photographer snapped what would turn into some of the celebrated images of all time, typically referred to as “Napalm Girl” or “The Terror of War.”

The devastating black-and-white picture — so merciless it dares you to look away — has turn into a defining depiction of America’s most brutal conflict: a unadorned woman operating, her pores and skin smoldering from napalm. The {photograph} captures, like few others, conflict’s uncooked violence, inhumanity, and despair. It is the deliberate work of a gifted photographer who instinctively grasped what was in entrance of him and created a decisive picture that might ricochet inside hours into the world’s conscience, the place it nonetheless lives 53 years later. The documentation of ache and struggling would win a Pulitzer, impress the antiwar effort, and switch a photographer into an in a single day sensation. The British conflict photographer Sir Don McCullin has referred to as it the most effective {photograph} of the battle. Susan Sontag proclaimed it “the signature Vietnam War horror-photograph.” 

The photograph has at all times been credited to a Vietnamese Associated Press employees photographer, Huỳnh Công “Nick” Út, who was on the highway that day. Út has informed many tales over the a long time concerning the horrific assault and his work. But a couple of years again, rumors started circulating amongst my colleagues within the photojournalism neighborhood that Út didn’t make that picture.

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For the previous two years, I’ve been a part of a crew, together with award-winning producers Fiona Turner (to whom I’m married) and Terri Lichstein (previously of ABC News), reporting on the {photograph}’s origins. Our investigation is the topic of a brand new unbiased documentary movie, which I additionally executive-produced, referred to as The Stringer. Multiple on-the-record sources stepped ahead throughout our reporting to dispute the accounts of Út and the AP. We additionally commissioned a forensic-analysis crew to look at the out there information, photos, and movie from that day. Their conclusion: What now we have been informed for greater than 50 years about who took essentially the most indelible {photograph} of the conflict is unlikely to be true.

Who took the photograph doesn’t change its profound impression, however it does alter a few of what we all know concerning the tradition of the Saigon press corps in the course of the glory days of conflict correspondence. And our movie has brought on disruption and fierce anger amongst veteran photographers all these a long time later. Starting earlier than The Stringer had even premiered on the Sundance Film Festival, a handful of journalists from the Vietnam period, in addition to associates of Nick Út, had been calling for the movie to be shelved — regardless of by no means having seen it. Others have contacted employers of people that assist the movie, condemning their stance and threatening to sever enterprise ties over the problem.

This visceral response is likely to be as a result of The Stringer probes greater than the authorship of a single {photograph}. It invitations conversations concerning the efficiency and mutability of reminiscence, our collective need for uplifting narratives and uncomplicated heroes, and a greedy for certainties the place there could also be none to be discovered. The revised historical past additionally questions the habits of colleagues now we have placed on pedestals and whose careers impressed others to observe. And it does so within the face of {a photograph} that’s foundational, as is the interval of journalism it represents. What is going on within the {photograph} will not be in dispute, however quite a lot of what occurred outdoors of it’s.

Both Út and the AP declined to be interviewed for the movie. An lawyer for Út tells Rolling Stone his shopper “had no intention of helping Knight … by participating in Knight’s defamatory efforts.” The AP says it “declined to enter a nondisclosure agreement with the filmmakers.” (In a letter from July 2024, the filmmakers requested the AP to “agree to an embargo” till “an agreed upon date of publication.”) 

On May 6, the AP launched a 97-page report that marked the fruits of what it says was its personal yearlong investigation into the {photograph}, together with evaluation of footage from the scene, interviews with Út and “others in the AP office that day,” and a 3D-model reconstruction of the occasion. The outcomes, based on an introductory abstract: “AP has concluded that it is possible Nick Út took the photo. However, that cannot be proven definitively due to the passage of time, the death of many of the key players involved, and the limitations of technology. New findings uncovered during this investigation do raise unanswered questions, and AP remains open to the possibility that Út did not take this photo.” The abstract of findings goes on to state: “AP’s standards say ‘a challenged credit would be removed only if definitive evidence … showed that the person who claimed to have taken the photo did not.’ All available evidence analyzed by AP does not clear that bar. Thus, the photo will remain attributed to Út.”

In June, the Amsterdam-based nonprofit World Press Photo, which in 1973 awarded Út the Photo of the Year for “Napalm Girl,” launched a report by itself five-month investigation into the {photograph}, which decided “its authorship cannot be definitively established.” Drawing on materials from each The Stringer and the AP report, in addition to its personal archival analysis and interviews, World Press discovered that “the cumulative evidence strongly suggests that it is highly unlikely that Nick Út is the author of ‘The Terror of War’ photograph.” The group stripped Út’s credit score from the photograph. (Út’s lawyer says World Press “never sought any input” from Út after an preliminary outreach — a declare the group denies — and alleges they’d “made up their mind to punish Nick Út from the start.” The lawyer additionally cites a letter signed by 640 photographers urging World Press to rescind its choice and restore Út’s credit score.)

Út’s first, and for a time solely, public remark after the movie’s launch was an announcement he posted to Facebook in February, which learn, partly, “I took the photo of Kim Phúc. I took the other photos from that day that show her family and the devastation the war caused. No one else has the right to claim that I did not take that specific or any other photo attributed to me because I am the creator of all the work I’ve done since day one.” Út added that “this accusation […] is a slap in the face of everyone who dedicated their entire lives, careers to creating authentic, real and true images in very difficult situations like the Vietnam War.”

In an announcement supplied to Rolling Stone, Út’s lawyer disputes the findings specified by The Stringer based mostly on a number of components, together with the accounts of quite a few eyewitnesses on the scene that day who nonetheless imagine Út took the photograph; the AP’s investigation, which concluded Út may have been in place to take it; and the 50 years that handed earlier than one other photojournalist, whom he claims has a “vendetta” in opposition to Út, surfaced allegations about its origins. The assertion begins with a easy declaration: “Nick Út took the famous image.” 

THE MEN AND WOMEN who coated Vietnam as journalists had been a decidedly blended solid. There had been seasoned reporters who’d coated World War II and had a tough time believing they had been being misled by U.S. officers. Young Ivy Leaguers like David Halberstam, Neil Sheehan, and Fox Butterfield introduced their privilege to the entrance. And wigged-out stoners like my buddy and mentor Tim Page and his pal Sean Flynn hitched rides to the darkest zones of the conflict carrying Nikons, Leicas, and “uppers” and “downers.” Some photographers there have been already legendary — Philip Jones Griffiths, Don McCullin, and Larry Burrows. Some had been turning into so, like the feminine conflict reporters and photographers who battled prejudice and emerged on the scene, together with the spectacularly brave Australian Kate Webb, the French Catherine Leroy and Françoise Demulder, and the Americans Elizabeth Becker and Frances FitzGerald.

“Kim Phúc emerged from the smoke crying and on fire. It was very powerful.”

New York Times photographer Fox Butterfield

The Vietnamese journalists working in fight zones didn’t embrace Ivy Leaguers, didn’t embrace girls, and didn’t embrace males who may afford to go to conflict stoned; they’d an excessive amount of at stake. They reported on the disintegration of their very own nation in the course of the day and managed the wants of their households at evening. There had been dozens of freelance and employees Vietnamese journalists crisscrossing the nation for each company and broadcaster. They had been ubiquitous, indefatigable, and terribly courageous. The spine of the press corps, lots of them died and have been ignored within the retelling of the conflict. Other than Nick Út, the Vietnamese have been largely whitewashed from the historical past of the journalism of their very own conflict.

The common AP reporting employees in Saigon in early 1972 comprised bureau chief Richard Pyle, American correspondents George Esper and Mike Putzel, chief Vietnamese reporter Huỳnh Minh Trinh, in addition to photograph editor Carl Robinson and photojournalists Lê Ngọc Cung, Đặng Văn Phước, and Út. The 1972 offensive had been wretched for AP, which was being repeatedly crushed by its essential rival, United Press International. With 4 Pulitzer Prizes in Vietnam since 1963, AP wasn’t accustomed to being second-best. This could possibly be why the AP bosses despatched in additional manpower, together with Peter Arnett, Mort Rosenblum, Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, and the legendary photographer and regional chief photograph editor Horst Faas. Faas’ job: Beat UPI again into second place and win the photograph protection. 

Faas was born in 1933. A baby of Nazi Germany, he lived in Berlin and, in his personal telling, was a member of the Hitler Youth in World War II. He as soon as informed me his trench was overrun by Russians who killed or executed everybody round him and that he was saved by a Russian sergeant who informed him to go dwelling to his mom. He spent the next years residing in a divided, impoverished postwar society. Photojournalism supplied him an escape route, and he seized it. Faas had a colossal aura in Vietnam — Falstaffian, fueled by high-quality wine and refined meals, in a position to entertain for hours together with his nice humorousness. He could possibly be distant, gruff, and intimidating, and he was additionally able to nice generosity, loyalty, and compassion. He coated the Vietnam War for 12 years, proving instrumental in 4 of AP’s eventual 5 Pulitzer Prizes from the conflict and serving to to create what turned a legendary information bureau. If the conflict in Vietnam marked the top of conflict journalism, and AP had a legendary perch in that conflict, a lot of it was resulting from Faas.

I met Faas in London within the early Nineteen Nineties, after I was a younger photographer working within the conflict in Bosnia. He was then in his sixties and had mellowed, however he had an actual presence. He was on the time head of AP Photos for Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, and was near retirement. He invoked admiration and respect in younger photographers who had labored for him in the course of the Balkan wars. He was an organization man: He cherished AP, and AP got here first — however should you labored arduous and delivered the products, he would again you within the discipline. By then, he wore a go well with to work, loved lengthy, boozy lunches in El Vino on Fleet Street, rode his Brompton bike to the workplace, and relished his position as a revered elder statesman.

Faas, Tim Page, and I labored collectively to coach younger photographers in Vietnam within the early 2000s. You may inform that Faas cherished giving again, and he was an incredible instructor, direct and concise. His dedication to Vietnam to the tip of his life was as unequivocal as his dedication to journalism and the AP.

In the years following the conflict, Nick Út was accruing a form of world superstar that was uncommon for a photographer. I by no means met Út again then, however I used to be conscious of the awards and worldwide acclaim he was incomes. For “Napalm Girl,” he had been celebrated with a Pulitzer Prize, the World Press Photo of the Year, the Overseas Press Club of America award, the George Polk Award, and, later, the U.S. National Medal of Arts. He met heads of state, the pope, and the queen of England. The AP posted him to Tokyo, after which Los Angeles, the place he labored for the following 40 years. He appeared to me a worthy advocate for photojournalism as he traveled around the globe with Kim Phúc, a United Nations ambassador and advocate for peace. Now, in retirement, he nonetheless travels the globe giving speeches and displays.

In early November 2022, I used to be requested to show a workshop in Hanoi the next spring with Nick Út and the storied conflict photographer James Nachtwey, in reminiscence of Tim Page, who had lately died. It didn’t take lengthy to determine to go. Vietnam is the place my youngsters come from and has particular that means in my household. I used to be eager to reconnect with my previous buddy James, who I hadn’t seen for some time, to satisfy Nick for the primary time, and to do one thing for younger Vietnamese photographers in reminiscence of my previous mentor Tim.

But earlier than embarking to Vietnam, on the twenty third of December, I used to be at my Massachusetts dwelling after I occurred to verify my junk-mail folder. I opened a message that had sat there for practically a month.

Dear Gary:

Through Mort Rosenblum from some time again, I’m questioning if we may focus on the Napalm Girl photograph and its provenance. I could also be of help — and vice versa.

Best regards,
Carl Robinson

Carl Robinson had been the AP photograph editor in Vietnam in June 1972. He had typed out the caption on the print of Kim Phúc that was transmitted from Saigon on June 8. Robinson was referring to data that I and a mutual buddy, the previous AP bureau chief Mort Rosenblum, had mentioned on one other, earlier educating gig in Vietnam. Robinson was in Vietnam on the time, and recollects visiting the workshop and speaking to Mort. My reminiscence of these interactions is incomplete, however I recall Mort telling me that the AP photograph editor working in Saigon in June 1972 had lately informed him that Út hadn’t taken the {photograph} often called “Napalm Girl.” Mort and I continued to speak about this once we met over the next yr or two, however all of us moved on; rumors aren’t unusual in our discipline.

I responded to Robinson’s e-mail, asking for context. A prolonged follow-up message talked about Faas, Út, photographers for the South Vietnamese military (ARVN), and Peter Arnett, an AP journalist who had gained the 1966 Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting for his work in Vietnam. Robinson’s element was extraordinary:

We had a number of rolls of black & white movie of the incident, Nick Út’s and people of three Vietnamese freelancers, typically official ARVN photographers, out making extra cash.   

As traditional, beneath Horst’s system, every roll was meticulously logged in with a double set of stick-on numbers: first beside the photographer’s identify in a faculty train e-book and second on the precise roll of movie for processing within the darkroom. 

The two photos Jackson had already chosen and printed up targeted on the woman — one full-frontal operating in direction of the digital camera, and [another] from the facet as she ran previous […] We each hesitated.   

AP had a factor — not precise coverage — about displaying any nudity, even girls and boys. […] Well, the facet shot, then. Discreet however nonetheless dramatic, Jackson and I agreed. As I ready to sort up the caption for the radio-photo and short-wave transmission to Tokyo, I double-checked the strips of movie negatives and their numbers for the byline on our chosen image. The facet shot was from Nick Út and the full-on shot from a contract photographer.

Then, Horst Faas walked again into the photograph workplace from his lengthy lunch down at Le Royal together with his longtime colleague Peter Arnett, who was additionally again in Saigon for the Easter Offensive. Horst checked out what Jackson and I had been doing. As I identified, we actually couldn’t see [using] the woman’s bare frontage, which even appeared to point out pubic hair.   

Pointing straight at that image, Horst ordered, “No, we will go with this one.” He checked the unfavorable, ordered a tighter crop, and despatched Jackson again into the darkroom for a brand new print. 

…I started typing the caption on our hulking Underwood typewriter. SAI, for Saigon, a hyphen after which a quantity; the dateline; the date of June 8; and a good three traces concerning the image. Horst hovered over my proper shoulder as I typed.   

Typically, on the finish of every radio-photo caption got here the photographer’s by-line with an “stf/name” for a Staffer or “str/name” for a Stringer, or freelancer. And that’s when Faas leant into my ear and ordered me to place Nick Út’s identify on the image — and I simply did it. I didn’t argue again. 

Reading Robinson’s second e-mail, I understood that if what he stated was true, if the identify on this photograph had been modified intentionally, this was of monumental significance. Public belief is key to the worth of journalism, and if the press needs to carry the remainder of society to account, it has to start out with itself. (Út’s lawyer condemns Robinson’s “50 year + delay” in making his declare public, and accuses him of “intentionally waiting” till Faas and different “key witnesses had passed.” He additionally alleges that Robinson has “clear animus toward Nick Út and the AP, as disclosed in his own book and other correspondence.”)

I couldn’t let my doubts go this time. Further examination was wanted. Importantly, if Út didn’t take the {photograph}, who did? With Fiona Turner and Terri Lichstein, I launched into an intense preliminary investigation. We learn each e-book and essay on the matter we may discover, reviewed all the out there images and movie, and talked to as many eyewitnesses as we may hint, together with David Burnett, who was then a younger photographer on task for The New York Times, and Mort Rosenblum. We needed as a lot data as we may get earlier than we went to Vietnam, the place I hoped to show the workshop and interview — and maybe problem — Robinson.

In March 2023, I arrived in Hanoi with James Nachtwey and Nick Út. It was awkward; I thought of speaking to Út concerning the accusations, however till I had interviewed Robinson and decided whether or not what he stated was credible, it was untimely to confront Út. I’d simply be repeating a rumor. The following week, I flew to Ho Chi Minh City to satisfy Turner and Lichstein and to interview Robinson, who was by then near 80.

Years earlier, Robinson had created a Google Group, Vietnam Old Hacks, a web based discussion board for veteran Vietnam War reporters dozens of members sturdy; his claims that Út didn’t take the photograph, which till then had been shared solely between small teams of colleagues, resurfaced there. Those who query why Robinson took so lengthy to come back ahead, and why others have been so reluctant to talk, would possibly discover some solutions in these pages. Former Newsweek correspondent Paul Brinkley-Rogers reacted to Robinson’s allegation by likening him to “a snake hissing in the dark.” Journalist Barry Fox had responded with a little bit of catnip: “Alan Downes, the ITN cameraman who was there and shot the news film of the ‘Napalm Girl’ story, denied that Út was even there. Downes told me this shortly after Út won the award. He was as much baffled as anything else.” Peter Arnett — who wasn’t on the highway in Trảng Bàng or within the bureau when the movie was being processed within the darkroom — had tried to discourage Robinson in 2009, writing, “You must be aware that the AP with all its resources, and Horst and his many friends, along with Nick Út himself and his Vietnamese associates, and all those AP staffers who take pride in their Vietnam service, will do everything possible to discredit you and your assertions, and challenge all of what you say.” (AP tells Rolling Stone, “It’s clear from the time and resources AP has dedicated to investigating this claim that we’ve taken the question about the authorship of its image extremely seriously.”)

“This accusation is a slap in the face of everyone who dedicated their lives to creating images in difficult situations like the Vietnam War.”

Nick Út

Downes was an esteemed cameraman with ITN for many years. His harrowing footage from Trảng Bàng had enhanced his popularity. But Downes had died in 1996 and couldn’t affirm for us his bafflement. That Út was there may be past doubt; we see him in images and movie from that day, and we all know he shot many images whereas there. But buried in Downes’ footage was a bit of proof that has been hidden in plain view for 50 years.

Downes had filmed most of the journalists current on the scene of the {photograph}. (Those who weren’t in his movie are in nonetheless images made that day.) In explicit, Downes was one of many six individuals within the group of newsmen closest to fleeing civilians, all of whom had been capturing Kim Phúc and the opposite youngsters as they ran towards them.

Kim Phúc has written powerfully about her experiences, and makes it clear she believes Út took the photograph, stating that one in every of her uncles and different journalists and eyewitnesses have informed her so. In an announcement issued in January, she stated, partly, “Nick took the image and he deserves the credit he has received. He is a good man who fully deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and kindness. I am so thankful he was not just a photographer. He is my hero for putting down his camera […] and saving my life.” 

She has additionally famous that she has no reminiscence of who took the well-known {photograph}. In her autobiography, Fire Road, she writes, “The sum of what I know from that day and the days to follow, I owe to Uncle Út. His memories became my memories.” It is a poignant assertion, not simply in what it exhibits concerning the depth of her trauma, but additionally the kindness and generosity she feels has been proven to her by Út.

We started to compile a listing of the surviving eyewitnesses to the second, which included Út; Hoàng Văn Danh, a freelancer sending images to UPI; Fox Butterfield of The New York Times; Donald Kirk of the Chicago Tribune;  David Burnett; Trần Văn Thân, an NBC soundman; Christopher Wain, the ITN TV correspondent who labored with Downes; and a person in a white shirt, black trousers, and a black vest, who we had been informed glided by the identify of Nghệ.

WHILE ÚT REFUSED MULTIPLE requests to speak to me, he has been interviewed many instances concerning the day’s occasions, and his account is extensively out there. Although his story has turn into accepted as reality, he has informed barely completely different variations, embellishing some particulars over time. In a newer telling — an opinion piece he wrote for The Washington Post in June 2022 — Út presents this description:

When the bombs exploded, we didn’t know whether or not anybody had been injured. All morning, the village had appeared empty. But many individuals had been hiding contained in the village temple.

As we got here nearer, we noticed individuals fleeing the napalm. I used to be horrified after I noticed a girl together with her left leg badly burned. I can nonetheless see so vividly the previous lady carrying a child who died in entrance of my digital camera and one other lady carrying a small baby together with his pores and skin coming off.

Then I heard a baby screaming, “Nong qua! Nong qua!” Too scorching! Too scorching! I seemed by my Leica viewfinder to see a younger woman who had pulled off her burning garments and was operating towards me. I began taking photos of her.

Then she yelled to her brother that she thought she was dying and needed some water. I immediately put my cameras down so I may assist her. I knew that was extra vital than taking extra images. I took my canteen for her to drink and poured water on her physique to chill her off, however it created extra ache for her. I didn’t know that when individuals get burned so badly, you’re not supposed to place water on them.

One downside with Út’s account is the digital camera. He has ceaselessly informed the story of utilizing a spare Leica M2 to make this decisive body. But the AP investigation discovered that the digital camera used to make the {photograph} was “unlikely” to have been a Leica, and particularly not the digital camera Út donated to the Science Museum in London, the place it was displayed because the digital camera that took the well-known photograph. Different manufacturers of cameras produce barely different-sized negatives, and by inspecting the size of the unfavorable, AP decided that “Napalm Girl” was “likely” made with a Pentax. A Pentax and a Leica M2 bear little resemblance to one another and, for an expert photographer, can be troublesome to confuse.

Út’s lawyer tells Rolling Stone that Út inherited two Pentax cameras from his brother, a photographer who had been killed on task for AP, and “carried [one of them] every day as a talisman.” He continues, “Nick Út has explained that the day the photo was taken, Horst Faas complimented him and told him it was a great Leica picture. At the time, Nick was 21 years old and certainly listened to his boss and mentor. He knew Horst was a Leica proponent and accepted Horst’s statement. Nick used multiple cameras that day and turned in eight rolls. He could not possibly know in the chaos of that day which roll came from which camera.”

How Faas would have been in a position to differentiate a Leica unfavorable from a Pentax unfavorable together with his bare eye is troublesome to fathom; they’re practically indistinguishable however for a distinction in measurement of fractions of millimeters. 

Another wrinkle in Út’s account is the timeline. In the previous, he’s claimed he was photographing the elder lady and, by his viewfinder, noticed Kim Phúc operating down the highway. Yet an examination of images and pictures from the day signifies that Kim Phúc got here out of the village earlier than the elder lady, and she or he fled very quickly after the napalm hit. As Kim Phúc runs towards the digital camera, the smoke from the burning gasoline remains to be so black it’s not even potential to see the Cao Đài temple. By the time the elder lady got here down the highway carrying the child, the wind — which historic climate reviews point out was at its strongest proper after the bombing — had dispersed many of the smoke, and the temple had turn into seen. In ITN’s movie footage, we see that Kim Phúc and the kids have run previous the digital camera considerably earlier than the elder lady comes into view. Út’s images of the elder lady seem to have been made after Kim Phúc ran down the highway, not earlier than. 

Út’s lawyer tells Rolling Stone, “Seeing all the footage and other images that have now been shown to Nick, he is convinced he was confused by the chaotic events that unfolded that day as to the sequence.” Being confused in fight is comprehensible; it occurs to many people, and it’d recommend the chance that this isn’t the one vital element about which Út could possibly be confused. 

In the movies and pictures made that day, Út is seen sporting his distinctive helmet with a tab protruding of it, a flak jacket with “AP” written on the again, quick sleeves, his digital camera bag, poncho, and watch. Burnett has typically famous how his buddy Út took the photograph whereas he, Burnett, missed it as a result of he was rewinding his movie. He’s stated he recollects seeing Út run up the highway with Newsweek stringer Alex Shimkin. Burnett has repeatedly stated he didn’t see who took the {photograph}, however he’s satisfied Út did, saying that, to his recollection, Út was the one particular person in the fitting place to have gotten the shot. Butterfield, who additionally maintains Út took the {photograph}, informed us in August 2024, “Kim Phúc emerged from the smoke crying and on fire. It was very powerful. Not sure who else was there. I wasn’t paying attention to [Út], I didn’t know him at that time. I was moving all the time, because the scene was moving, and we didn’t know what was going to happen next.” 

When pressed, neither Burnett nor Butterfield is ready to say they really witnessed Út take the {photograph}, and nobody else has come ahead to say definitively that they noticed him take the photograph. Burnett has referred to a lone photographer we are able to see past the concertina wire earlier within the sequence as Út, which could make it potential for Út to have been in the fitting place on the proper time. But that isn’t Út; we imagine it’s a navy photographer, later recognized by the AP as Huỳnh Công Phúc. (Both AP and World Press, in their very own investigations, concluded based mostly on out there footage that Huỳnh Công Phúc may plausibly have been in the fitting space to take the “Napalm Girl” {photograph}, although nobody has up to now come ahead claiming he did. Huỳnh Công Phúc died in 2009.) The navy photographer is carrying a bag and sporting camouflage, not the U.S. navy olive-green that Út was sporting; he wasn’t sporting a flak jacket, as Út was, and he bears no resemblance to the particular person Út recognized as himself that day years in a while his personal Instagram feed. And in addition to, the image of that lone photographer past the wire is credited to Út within the AP archive, wherein case Út couldn’t be within the {photograph}. We know the TV crews and photographer who made the pictures of Kim Phúc all moved past the concertina wire. In one intriguing photograph, we see a photographer in a white shirt and black vest photographing the kids as they run previous the TV crews, placing him in a perfect place to have taken the {photograph} moments earlier than.

HOW DO YOU FIND SOMEONE perhaps referred to as Nghệ with nothing however a 50-year-old photograph of a small determine whose face is partly hidden by a digital camera? We weren’t even certain of the identify, which was given to Carl Robinson’s spouse by a Vietnamese AP photographer who claimed it belonged to the one who had actually taken the photograph. 

Robinson, his spouse Kim-Dung, Terri Lichstein, and the Vietnamese reporter we employed to work with us, Lê Vân, got here up with an thought to rent a distinguished native blogger who had an intensive community by his Facebook web page, each in Vietnam and within the diaspora, to search out Nghệ. In March 2023, we agreed on a price of $1,000, and the blogger, Nguyễn Ngọc Vinh, posted the photograph together with a message asking anybody who thought they may know the person within the white shirt, darkish trousers, and darkish vest — who is likely to be referred to as Nghệ — to please contact him.

Three days later, a retired movie technician from Los Angeles, Chinh Dao, responded. The man within the photograph was his buddy Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. Chinh and his brother Thang had met Nghệ within the late Eighties and labored with him at FotoKem in L.A., printing movies for Hollywood studios, the place Nghệ spent a lot of his postwar life constructing a profession to assist his household in California. Chinh later informed us, “I hope, I hope that story is going to come out soon. My friend Mr. Nghệ has been waiting for the whole of his life.” 

Chinh despatched a message to his brother in Los Angeles, who referred to as Nghệ immediately. “Really, some people are looking for me?” Nghệ stated, based on Thang. Then, says Lê Vân, Nghệ, who was within the Mekong Delta on trip, referred to as the blogger: “I am the one you are looking for.”  

Nghệ was by then 85 years previous. In an interview the next day, Lê Vân discovered him lucid however frail. The story she heard from him appeared to corroborate and add to Robinson’s. When requested which images he took on June 8, 1972, he stated, “The one with the naked little girl whose clothes were burned.” Lê Vân requested him, “The one that won the Pulitzer later on?” “Yes,” he replied. When she returned dwelling to Ho Chi Minh City, Lê Vân says, she burst into tears after which referred to as us.

We intensified our effort to reconstruct the narrative of June 8, 1972. Then, inevitably, issues began to go sideways. The blogger we had employed understood the impression of what we had discovered and threatened to publish the story of Nghệ in Vietnamese on Facebook except we gave him $10,000. We didn’t, and he revealed what he had. While the international press didn’t discover, Nick Út did, and promptly posted a photograph of himself in Trảng Bàng on his Instagram web page. Út then went on Bolsa TV — a U.S.-based Vietnamese-language media group — and defended himself. Separately, he additionally proclaimed that AP would sue anybody who challenged his authorship. Soon after, the community of veteran Vietnam correspondents we had been speaking to closed ranks. Portentously, it started to get ugly as associates and colleagues of Faas attacked Robinson’s credibility.

In his look on Bolsa TV, Út referred to Nghệ as a driver for NBC, however he was neither a employed driver nor had a job for NBC. Nghệ was freelancing on spec and had NBC accreditation. Like many photographers in wars earlier than and since, he wanted accreditation to entry fight zones if he was working as a freelancer; on the time, information bureaus would typically give them out in change for a primary take a look at your materials. Nghệ says he drove to Trảng Bàng that day and took Út as a back-seat passenger, then drove straight again to Saigon after the work was over, additionally with Út within the again seat. This might clarify why Út refers to him as a driver.

As our reporting quickly bore out, Nghệ was way over a driver. Piecing collectively data from him, his youngsters, and Department of Defense data, we shaped an image of his life and his dedication to the craft of creating photos.

Born to his father’s mistress, Nghệ was raised by a surrogate household that acquired cash from his father. Around age 18, he left dwelling to review cinematography at school, and across the late Nineteen Fifties, he began work as a cameraman and photographer for the South Vietnamese military. He acquired alerts coaching from the U.S. navy in New Jersey in 1961 after which returned to Vietnam. Later within the conflict, due to that coaching, he was seconded, or basically loaned, by the South Vietnamese military to the CIA PsyOps program transmitting broadcasts to North Vietnamese forces for “Mother Vietnam,” a propaganda unit of the CIA.

By 1970, Nghệ had turn into a primary sergeant and an skilled conflict photographer. While his civilian colleagues donned tailored fight fatigues, he would generally slip out of the workplace in road garments and {photograph} the conflict to earn extra cash to assist his three youngsters by promoting images to native newspapers. He says he carried a Pentax Spotmatic — the kind of digital camera AP’s intensive investigation suggests was used to take the photograph — loaded with black-and-white Kodak Tri-X movie, and used a 50mm lens. He additionally used a Bolex movie digital camera, he informed us, so he may double up and promote movie to the TV networks.

June 8, 1972, was the primary and final time Nghệ says he ever bought images to AP.

It was Nghệ’s brother-in-law, the NBC soundman Trần Văn Thân, who recounts going with Nghệ to promote the images to AP. Thân was one of many six males within the first group of newsmen closest to the Cao Đài temple who had been filming Kim Phúc and the kids operating towards them.

Thân was one of many final individuals we had been in a position to monitor down and interview. He summarized the fabric from our two interviews in November 2023 and May 2024 in a letter he despatched me shortly thereafter, describing the occasions on the highway. “While we were filming,” he wrote, “Nguyễn Thành Nghệ stood on my left side and took a photo of the burned girl. After finishing, I said to Nguyễn Thành Nghệ, ‘Today, there were no reporters from the news agencies UPI and AP here. Give me the film; I’ll help sell it to AP.’”

“You must be aware that the AP with all its resources . . . will do everything possible to discredit you and your assertions.”

AP reporter Peter Arnett, to photograph editor
Carl Robinson in a public chat discussion board
for Vietnam War photographers

Thân defined to us that “the office of NBC News and the news agency AP [were] just a wall apart, so we [were] very familiar with each other.” Thân says he went with Nghệ to promote his images to AP and feels sure concerning the position of Horst Faas in what adopted: “He selected the photo of the burned child and returned all the other film rolls to me, giving me 20 dollars for the photo he chose. Along with it, there was one [print] picture of the burned child. I handed everything to Nghệ.”

Thân describes the “surprise, shock, and fury” he and Vietnamese colleagues felt when, a couple of months later, the photograph of the burned baby gained a global award for Út. Thân says he dared not utter a phrase concerning the deceit on the time. The administrators of AP and NBC News had been, he explains, very shut. “I had to stay silent; otherwise, I could lose my job and my source of income,” he informed us, his voice without delay plaintive and matter-of-fact. “How would I support my family?” 

One of a number of causes Arnett, Burnett, Butterfield, and others are satisfied Út took the {photograph} could possibly be that, by their very own accounts, Faas informed them so. None of them have ever claimed they definitively noticed who pressed the shutter. In books and interviews, they’ve shared how they heard Faas congratulate Út within the AP workplace. Burnett and Arnett might have witnessed that, but when Faas’ personal telling of the story is to be believed, they might have arrived too late to see the movie being delivered to the AP bureau and being processed, and neither of them declare to have seen the caption being typed. They simply have Faas’ phrase. 

Carl Robinson will not be shut with Út’s most vocal supporters, and is one thing of an outsider amongst expat reporters who coated the conflict, however that doesn’t disqualify him as a reputable witness. Nor does his self-acknowledged drug use, which many Út supporters have cited in an effort to discredit him. (If his leisure drug use within the early Seventies in Vietnam makes him unreliable, the place does that go away the remainder of the press corps?) What is for certain is that the reality can’t be established solely by what passed off within the AP Bureau; it should come, finally, from the highway to Trảng Bàng.

Fortunately, that highway is plagued by proof within the type of images and movie.

Acknowledging the space in time between what occurred in a small village in Vietnam in 1972 and now, and understanding that there are such a lot of conflicting accounts by Út, Faas, Nghệ, Thân, and different eyewitnesses, our filmmaking crew engaged the French NGO Index Investigation, one of many world’s main unbiased forensic-investigation firms, to look at all the information and proof we had gathered. Relying on a cautious evaluation of the out there documentation — together with images taken that day, aerial photos, U.S. satellite tv for pc imagery of Trảng Bàng from 1972, video recordings, and details about the peak, clothes, and gear of journalists on the scene — the agency created a 3D mannequin wherein all the related gamers had been positioned alongside the axis of the Trảng Bàng highway. Their actions had been reconstructed in chronological order. 

The Index report referred to a “frame-matching” method that allowed exact positioning of varied individuals current on the highway that day at completely different instances. It used nonetheless photos and movie that present Nghệ in his white shirt and darkish vest, the movie crews with their cameras and sound gear, the tall ITN reporter Christopher Wain, Út sporting his distinct helmet with the tag, his AP flak jacket, quick sleeves, a bulging digital camera bag on his left hip, poncho, and watch, and reconstructed the scene. Index initially concluded that simply seconds after the image was taken, Út was situated roughly 200 toes away from that spot; following the AP report, which launched new data, Index revised its estimate of the space to roughly 75 meters or 250 toes.

Francesco Sebregondi of Index says, “Nick Út’s presence at that particular second within the ITN information video makes it extremely implausible that he may have taken the ‘Napalm Girl’ {photograph}. Indeed, with the intention to shoot ‘Napalm Girl,’ and seem in that body of the ITN footage strolling towards the scene he would have needed to cowl a distance of roughly 75 meters in a matter of seconds, and achieve this outdoors of the ITN digital camera’s body. 

“This seems very unlikely,” Sebregondi continues, “and editorially, doesn’t make any sense that he would want to move away from the action. We can conclude that it is highly unlikely that Nick Út took the ‘Napalm Girl’ photograph.” Út’s lawyer dismisses the Index findings as “junk science,” citing the AP’s evaluation, which posits that the space Út would have coated was lower than 75 meters. (AP’s investigation disputes some components of Index’s report, however the core findings had been supported by World Press Photo’s investigation.) 

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Archival images and 3D forensic reconstructions by Index Investigation place Út’s account in query

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CREDIBLE JOURNALISM RELIES on credible authors, credible editors, and credible information organizations. If, as our reporting and the Index forensics recommend, Nick Út didn’t take the {photograph}, why wouldn’t he have stated something? Út wouldn’t discuss to the filmmaking crew, so we haven’t been in a position to ask him. But one principle considerations the ability and authority of Horst Faas. If Carl Robinson, a longtime photograph editor and a fellow American, didn’t really feel assured sufficient to problem Faas, why would the younger Vietnamese photographer Út, essentially the most junior particular person within the workplace? Robinson maintains he modified the byline completely at Faas’ bidding, suggesting that Út had no company and was by no means consulted on the matter. 

How may AP bosses in New York have allowed such an egregious offense to occur? The company proudly calls itself “the most trusted source of fast, accurate, unbiased news.” AP HQ wouldn’t have recognized on the time who took the photograph, and would have trusted their individuals within the discipline, simply as different information organizations would. According to a submit Peter Arnett wrote in November 2015 on Vietnam Old Hacks, modern-day senior AP editors had by then heard the rumors about this photograph and dismissed them. (Arnett didn’t reply to the filmmakers’ request for an interview, and AP says that “there has been no serious challenge to this photo’s authorship until now.”) 

And how may Faas have knowingly perpetrated such deception? This is the query that, in my thoughts, deserves the best scrutiny. Faas writes that he was coming back from lunch with Arnett when he first noticed the photograph. He has additionally written he was coming back from an task. Memory can play methods on all of us, however his recounting of the second he first noticed the photograph doesn’t change: “When I got back to the office,” he wrote, “I glanced at films edited by others, not out of lack of trust, but because I thought a second look was often helpful. And there, without a doubt, the best photo was the one that had been discarded. Richard Pyle, then bureau chief, remembers me saying, ‘I think we’ve got the next Pulitzer!’ … The film was processed by one of the editors. He did not select this photo because the little girl was naked, and the rule at AP was to not show a naked young girl, especially a pubescent girl. That editor, Carl Robinson, fearing that the photo was too risky and wouldn’t get by the New York office, suggested other photos, all of which were good but just hovered around the subject.”

“I’m voicing a truth that has weighed heavily on my heart for over half a century.”

NBC sound engineer Trần Văn Thân

Faas’ intuition for prize-winning images was acute. He took credit score for coaching Malcolm Browne, who photographed the picture of a self-immolating Buddhist monk in 1963, and, in 1968, he’d picked out Eddie Adams’ {photograph} of Brig. Gen. Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner. He gained his first Pulitzer for images from Vietnam in 1965 and his second from Bangladesh in 1972.

Faas is the one one who is aware of why he allegedly informed Robinson to alter the identify from Nguyễn Thành Nghệ to Nick Út. But Faas is useless. So what may have motivated him? We know the choice was made shortly. The movie couldn’t have been within the bureau for far more than three hours, and Faas was at lunch for a few of that point, so maybe he didn’t suppose it by; maybe it was impulsive. He would have had no loyalty to the stringer Nghệ, having by no means met him, and Nghệ says he had by no means bought a picture to AP earlier than that day. Faas was, nonetheless, loyal to Út, a younger staffer he’d mentored after Út’s brother, Huỳnh Thanh Mỹ, was killed whereas working for AP a couple of years prior. Giving this picture to Út wouldn’t make up for his brother’s loss of life, however is it potential Faas thought it might make Út safer at AP? 

As AP director of images Hal Buell recounts in From Hell to Hollywood, a 2021 e-book about Út, Faas had already despatched a message to New York alerting them to the concept this photograph can be “an icon of all time.” He knew it had the potential to win prizes, and prizes — like being wounded in motion — burnish a journalist’s popularity. There was one other consideration: Faas, together with Arnett, Mort Rosenblum, and Jackson, had been flown into Saigon to assist the bureau as a result of — based on Robinson — AP was “losing the play” to UPI. This was not a second for an “icon of all time” to be transmitted with the byline of a stringer, underscoring that the AP staffer had missed the photograph. That may sign to New York that the bureau had failed. Faas wasn’t used to failure.

Tim Page as soon as claimed to me that Faas had put his identify on the work of Vietnamese photographers and brought credit score for them as his personal. Page was one in every of my mentors, and his phrase mattered to me. That wasn’t the primary time I had heard such a narrative from one photographer about one other; the career — like most others — will not be freed from jealousy. Nevertheless, whereas misattribution by no means occurred to me, I had seen it occur to different younger photographers, particularly native photographers, as I used to be constructing my very own profession, and the allegation didn’t appear implausible. At a gathering in June 2024, the widow of French photographer Michel Laurent had informed me that her husband left AP for the French company Gamma after Faas transmitted photos from Bangladesh in 1972 co-bylined together with his identify and Laurent’s. The images gained the Pulitzer Prize, with each males’s names on them. She claimed to me that the images had been 100% Laurent’s. (Pulitzer tells Rolling Stone, “This is the first we are hearing” of such an allegation.)

Had Faas grown to rationalize often altering the credit score on images over practically a decade of conflict? Would this clarify how he might need taken one thing from a stringer he didn’t know, given AP and the youthful brother of his useless colleague the kudos, and enhanced his standing on the company?

WE MAY NEVER KNOW why Nick Út was seemingly given one thing he by no means requested for. But we all know that numerous Vietnamese photographers and reporters labored in anonymity in the course of the Vietnam War, not out of selection however as a result of their work was not credited in any respect, or was credited to others. To today, dozens of gifted and brave Vietnamese photographers, cameramen, and reporters stay unknown and unrecognized for the sensible work they produced. They accepted that establishment as a result of they’d no selection. The politics of race and energy, and the suffocating presence of the U.S. navy, meant they had been outsiders in their very own nation; they knew nobody would hear, as a result of they weren’t equal. Some of them nonetheless don’t really feel protected speaking now.

Among these outsiders is the final particular person we tracked down from the full-frame model of the {photograph} of Kim Phúc that the AP despatched around the globe. A Vietnamese photographer, he took images of the kids as they got here throughout the sphere towards the highway however then ran out of movie. Repeatedly mistaken by Fox Butterfield and others for David Burnett within the well-known {photograph}, he could be seen on the fitting, sporting a helmet and urgently rewinding his digital camera. His identify is Hoàng Văn Danh, a freelancer who bought images to UPI, AP’s essential competitor. 

In September 2024, in spite of everything our emails with Carl Robinson, in spite of everything our interviews, after assembly Nghệ, after Index’s forensics investigation, we met Văn Danh. We confirmed him the {photograph} and requested him if he recollects Nick Út standing subsequent to him.

“Nick? No, no, no,” he answered emphatically. “He wasn’t there, he was way back.”

Of those that had particular data of that day, Nghệ’s brother-in-law, the NBC sound engineer Trần Văn Thân, who was standing subsequent to Nghệ when the {photograph} was taken, was some of the torn by the course of occasions. Thân says he bought these photos on Nghệ’s behalf to the AP, however his account had by no means entered the general public report. (In reality, he had turn into estranged from Nghệ after the latter separated from Thân’s sister.) The letter he wrote to us in fall 2024 with particulars of the day ends as a lament:

Though [I] remained silent, I couldn’t overlook that incident. Until at the moment, greater than half a century later, this incident nonetheless lingers bitterly in my coronary heart. It’s the reality, why disguise it?

I’ve by no means spoken this fact out loud. My soul remains to be troubled, stressed, as a result of I really feel like I’m somebody who hid the reality!

Today, I’m telling this fact. I noticed Nguyễn Thành Nghệ taking the photograph of the burned baby with my very own eyes.

After a long time, Trần Văn Thân launched his burden: “I’m writing these words, remembering and voicing a truth that has weighed heavily on my heart for over half a century.” 

I requested Nghệ how he felt when he realized his identify might have been intentionally faraway from the {photograph}. He replied, “I’m just sad, not knowing what to do. My life is not equal to them, so I lost, there’s nothing more I can do.”

Since The Stringer premiered at Sundance in January, there have been solutions by some journalists that this story shouldn’t have been informed; they posit that on this second when journalism is being so savagely undermined by the very forces it seeks to carry to account, the very last thing we want is to disclose our personal failures. But journalism is important to democracy, and it’s within the pursuits of each the press and the general public that belief within the Fourth Estate is repaired. That can’t be finished if we select to disregard accusations of wrongdoing in our personal career. The passage of time might improve the anguish of self-examination, however the seek for fact is at all times price the fee.