🔗 Share this article

One of the most famous images from the 20th century depicts an unclothed girl, her hands outstretched, her face distorted in agony, her flesh scorched and peeling. She appears running toward the photographer as fleeing an airstrike in South Vietnam. To her side, additional kids are racing out of the devastated village in Trảng Bàng, with a scene featuring dark smoke and troops.

The Global Impact of a Powerful Picture

Within hours its distribution in the early 1970s, this picture—originally named "Napalm Girl"—evolved into a pre-digital hit. Viewed and discussed by millions, it's generally credited for motivating worldwide views against the American involvement during that era. One noted thinker subsequently observed that the profoundly indelible picture of nine-year-old the subject in distress likely was more effective to heighten global outrage toward the conflict compared to lengthy broadcasts of broadcast barbarities. A renowned English war photographer who reported on the war called it the ultimate image from what would later be called the televised conflict. One more veteran photojournalist remarked how the image is simply put, among the most significant photographs ever taken, particularly of that era.

The Long-Standing Claim Followed by a Recent Claim

For half a century, the image was assigned to Huynh Cong “Nick” Út, a then-21-year-old local photographer on assignment for a major news agency at the time. Yet a provocative recent documentary on a streaming service contends which states the iconic photograph—often hailed as the pinnacle of combat photography—was actually shot by another person at the location in Trảng Bàng.

According to the documentary, "Napalm Girl" may have been taken by a freelancer, who provided his photos to the news agency. The claim, and the film’s resulting inquiry, began with an individual called a former photo editor, who states that the dominant photo chief instructed him to reassign the image’s credit from the stringer to Nick Út, the one agency photographer present that day.

The Investigation to find the Real Story

The source, advanced in years, contacted an investigator in 2022, requesting help to identify the unknown stringer. He mentioned how, if he was still living, he wished to give a regret. The investigator considered the independent stringers he knew—comparing them to the stringers of today, just as local photographers in that era, are routinely ignored. Their work is commonly questioned, and they function amid more challenging circumstances. They lack insurance, no retirement plans, little backing, they usually are without good equipment, and they remain extremely at risk as they capture images within their homeland.

The investigator wondered: “What must it feel like to be the man who took this photograph, should it be true that it wasn't Nick Út?” From a photographic perspective, he imagined, it could be extraordinarily painful. As an observer of the craft, specifically the vaunted war photography of Vietnam, it would be earth-shattering, maybe reputation-threatening. The revered legacy of the photograph in Vietnamese-Americans meant that the creator whose parents fled during the war was hesitant to take on the investigation. He said, I hesitated to challenge the established story attributed to Nick the photograph. And I didn’t want to change the status quo within a population that always respected this achievement.”

This Inquiry Progresses

Yet the two the investigator and the creator agreed: it was important raising the issue. When reporters are to keep the world in the world,” noted the journalist, we must are willing to ask difficult questions of ourselves.”

The film tracks the journalists as they pursue their research, from eyewitness interviews, to public appeals in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, to examining footage from related materials recorded at the time. Their search finally produce a name: a freelancer, working for NBC during the attack who occasionally provided images to foreign agencies on a freelance basis. In the film, a heartfelt the man, now also in his 80s residing in the US, claims that he handed over the image to the AP for minimal payment and a print, only to be plagued by the lack of credit for decades.

This Backlash Followed by Additional Scrutiny

Nghệ appears throughout the documentary, reserved and thoughtful, but his story turned out to be explosive within the world of photojournalism. {Days before|Shortly prior to