Who shot the long-lasting Vietnam War ‘Napalm Girl’ photograph? Film claims improper photographer bought the credit score

One of essentially the most highly effective images from the Vietnam War reveals a younger South Vietnamese woman operating down a avenue, bare and crying.

Behind her, South Vietnamese planes had simply pummeled her village with napalm bombs. It was a case of pleasant hearth.

Some of the woman’s garments had been burned off. She had torn off the remainder, because the bombs’ chemical substances had scorched her pores and skin.

The influence of the so-called “Napalm Girl” photograph from 1972 nonetheless resonates immediately, mentioned photojournalist Gary Knight.

“The most important photographs of war, I believe, are photographs that show the circumstances and conditions under which civilians endure war,” Knight said. “And it’s a horrific, horrific photograph.”

It was printed world wide, and it helped provoke the motion to finish the Vietnam War.

It additionally propelled a younger Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, into the worldwide highlight. Ut, then a workers photojournalist for The Associated Press, gained a Pulitzer Prize for the image. He was invited to satisfy the Pope and the Queen of England.

“As a Vietnamese-American, that photo is ingrained in our history,” said filmmaker Bao Nguyen, who’s the son of Vietnamese immigrants. “Knowing that that photograph changed the direction of the war and knowing, believing that a Vietnamese person had won the Pulitzer Prize … meant a lot to our community.”

But Knight, who until recently lived in Newburyport, and Nguyen claim the wrong man got the credit for taking the historic photo. They say it was taken by a freelance photographer, also known as a “stringer,” who never got his due.

They’re the executive producer and the director of a new documentary called “The Stringer,” showing in Cambridge Saturday at the GlobeDocs Film Festival. The film will appear on Netflix starting Nov. 28.

Its producers hired forensic investigators to uncover whether Ut or stringer Nguyen Thanh Nghe took the iconic shot. The team recreated the scene using old satellite and still images, news film and 3D models. Ultimately, their investigation concluded Ut was too far down the street to have taken the photo — but that Nghe was in the right spot.

The AP launched its own investigation around the photograph, which is officially named “The Terror of War.” Its 97-page report, launched in May, states:

AP has concluded that it’s doable Nick Ut took the photograph. However, that can not be confirmed definitively as a result of passage of time, the dying of lots of the key gamers concerned and the constraints of expertise. New findings uncovered throughout this investigation do increase unanswered questions and AP stays open to the chance that Ut didn’t take this photograph.

However, AP mentioned, within the absence of definitive proof that Ut didn’t take the photograph, it can proceed to credit score him for the picture.

Kim Phuc, the woman within the photograph, survived the napalm assault. Now 62 years outdated, Phuc instructed AP she can not bear in mind these moments, however that she believes Ut took the photograph, as eyewitnesses have instructed her.

Ut didn’t grant an interview to the journalists who made the movie.

WBUR’S All Things Considered host Lisa Mullins spoke with documentary makers Knight and Nguyen.

Interview Highlights

On the whistleblower, Carl Robinson, a former photograph editor for The Associated Press in Saigon, who claims the chief photographer for the AP within the area, Horst Faas, ordered him to credit score Nick Ut for the photograph when writing its caption.

Gary Knight: “Carl wrote to me just before Christmas in 2022. And he had spoken amongst a very small group of journalists who covered the Vietnam War about his story for a number of years. But he had never had the courage to go public with it. He was approaching his 80s, and he wrote to me, and he said, ‘You know, I want to get this off my chest, and I want to talk, and I want you to help me tell my story.’ “

On the choice to credit score Nick Ut for the photograph:

Knight: “Well, only Horst [Faas, who died in 2012] can truly answer that question  [about the photo caption]. But Carl and I spoke about that at some length in the film, and what we believe is that Nick Ut’s brother had been killed on assignment for Horst Faas a few years previously. He was a photographer. … And Horst felt enormous guilt about that. And also, Horst had no loyalty to the stringer, who had never sold photographs to AP before. And when a photograph goes out onto the wire with the letters STF, meaning staff,  it shows that The Associated Press in this case, the wire service, had enterprised the photographs themselves using a staff photographer.  If it goes out with STR, meaning stringer, it basically means that the photograph walked through the door and it wasn’t enterprised by, in this case, AP.”

On the freelance photographer they imagine took the photograph, based mostly on the investigation behind the documentary:

Bao Nguyen: “Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who was a stringer at that time, was on that road the day that that famous photo was taken. He always claimed since the day that the photo was taken that he was the one who took that photograph.

“And for over 50 years now, he hasn’t had an opportunity to inform his story, his reminiscence, his expertise of that day. And for me, together with Gary and our workforce of journalists, [we] imagine that everybody’s reminiscence, everybody’s expertise has equal worth. And it was essential for us to discover the query of who probably took the {photograph}, provided that this had been type of written into document for, once more, 50-plus years. And, you recognize, he is by no means requested for something extra apart from to inform his story.”

On tracking down Nghe, who was living in California with his family but was in Vietnam when the documentary team found him:

Knight: “It was very emotional to satisfy him for the primary time. Our first contact with him was made by a Vietnamese colleague.  … So she went down to go to him, confirmed him the pictures, and talked to him about his expertise that day. And he recognized himself because the writer of that {photograph}. He [later] had a stroke, and the remainder of the workforce flew out from the States and from Europe to satisfy him. And once we met him in hospital, he was in fairly dangerous form. And it was very, very emotional, and for some time we, we weren’t certain if he’d make it by way of. But he did. And he is frail.”

On why it was important to try to confirm who took the photo all these years later:

Knight: “Well, reality in journalism is paramount, proper? And you recognize, as anyone mentioned instantly after the movie was first proven at Sundance [Film Festival], reality has no expiration date. And this {photograph} is likely one of the most essential images or acts of journalism manufactured from any warfare … and the concept that the authorship may very well be significantly challenged is troubling. And if that query is requested, it is crucial that as journalists, we go and reply that query, or examine the accusation and do our greatest to reply the query.”

On what it was like to be with Nghe and his family, who, like others in the film, described turmoil they experienced over Nghe not being credited for the famous photo:

Nguyen: “I may simply sense this, you recognize, huge quantity of gratitude that that they had [for our] listening to their story. … And I feel folks could query — and I really questioned this at first — why did it take so lengthy for them to inform this story? And I noticed, like, it was one thing that they needed to carry with them as a result of they did not really feel like that they had the company or the recourse to have the ability to discuss to AP, to speak to folks exterior that will hear, that will have the ability to type of inform their story.”