Ut’s photograph, called ‘The Napalm Girl’, became representative of the atrocities of the Vietnam War—the napalm bombing could be categorised as ‘friendly fire’, and Phuc collateral damage—and joined Malcolm Browne’s ‘Burning Monk’ and Eddie Adams’ ‘Saigon Execution’ as defining images of the brutal conflict.
Full Answer
My brother told me “I hope one day you have a picture to stops the war””. On June 8, 1972 Nick Ut took just such a picture, a photograph that stopped the war. The photograph is said to be one of the most memorable photographs of the 20th Century. He moved out of Vietnam when Saigon fell and eventually settled in LA.
Featured on the front page of several newspapers including the New York Times and subsequently awarded the 1973 Pulitzer Prize, Nick Ut’s memorable Napalm Girl shocked its audience and is claimed to have shifted public opinion and perhaps even the course of the war.
The terror of war or also known as the Napalm Girl is a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph taken by photojournalist Nick Ut, a Vietnamese American photographer who was working for the associated Press at that time. After his brother was killed in 1965 at the age of 27, Nick joined AP in 1966.
Nick Ut, an Associated Press photographer, was able to capture a chilling image which symbolised the horrors of the Vietnam War, resulting in a barrage of protests. While on a regular assignment to cover the war in the suburbs of Saigon, Ut froze in time a frame filled with agony, terror and death.
Phan Thị Kim Phúc OOnt (Vietnamese pronunciation: [faːŋ tʰɪ̂ˀ kim fúk͡p̚]; born April 6, 1963), referred to informally as the girl in the picture and the Napalm girl, is a South Vietnamese-born Canadian woman best known as the nine-year-old child depicted in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph taken at Trảng Bàng ...
The use of napalm in Vietnam helped to galvanize the antiwar movement in the United States. One target was Dow Chemical Company, which manufactured napalm for the U.S. government from 1965 to 1969. Protests against Dow and boycotts of its products occurred across the country.
Eddie Adams' image of the execution of a Viet Cong member on the streets of Saigon and Nick Ut's photo of a little girl running naked down the street after being burned by napalm are two examples of “iconic” photos as defined by scholars.
Just one camera and one or two lenses.” Today, Ut's go-to gear includes the Nikon D5 with the SIGMA 60-600mm F4. 5-6.3 DG OS HSM | Sports hyper-telephoto lens, and the Leica SL with the SIGMA 100-400mm F5-6.3 DG DN OS | Contemporary telephoto zoom.
Napalm burns result in severe skin damage that can cause multiorgan system failure and death. Severe disfigurement and loss of function are common, requiring skin grafting and specialized care. Keloid formation may occur in some individuals. The psychological effect of exposure to napalm may be severe.
napalm, the aluminum salt or soap of a mixture of naphthenic and aliphatic carboxylic acids (organic acids of which the molecular structures contain rings and chains, respectively, of carbon atoms), used to thicken gasoline for use as an incendiary in flamethrowers and fire bombs.
On television screens and magazine pages around the world, photographs told a story of a fight that only got more confusing, more devastating, as it went on. As Jon Meacham describes in this week's issue of TIME, the pictures from that period can help illuminate the “demons” of Vietnam.
'The Terror of War' The title of this photo says it all, “The Terror of War.” Vietnamese-American photographer Nick Ut won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1972 image of innocent children fleeing an accidental napalm attack on their village.
The photos are production stills from the movie. The real Galloway says he wishes they'd used his actual photos from the battle.
Napalm is legal to use on the battlefield under international law. Its use against "concentrations of civilians" is a war crime.
An image does have the capacity to unite people, and to ignite change. Photography can be a tool for social good, and, slowly, it can change the world. Portrait of Humanity serves as a timely reminder, that despite our many differences, we are able to unite as a global community through the power of photography.
Nick UtOn June 8, 1972, Nick Ut, then a 20-year-old photographer for the Associated Press, strapped on four cameras and headed out on Highway 1, north of Saigon. Just after noon, he noticed a South Vietnamese Skyraider drop four napalm bombs.
Nick Ut, an Associated Press photographer, was able to capture a chilling image which symbolised the horrors of the Vietnam War, resulting in a barrage of protests. While on a regular assignment to cover the war in the suburbs of Saigon, Ut froze in time a frame filled with agony, terror and death.
The iconic photograph fetched Ut the Pulitzer Prize and the World Press Photo Award, and is a tribute to his brother who died at a young age while covering the Vietnam War.
It was just 25 miles outside the Saigon City in the village of Trang Bang that Ut witnessed a terrified group of men, women and children running away from a pagoda. The moment he aimed his camera at them, there was a trembling noise and black smoke filled the air, as a result of four bombs being dropped, and within minutes, a low-flying A-1 Skyraider charged napalm at the crowd.
Photographers cover conflict mainly to document war, not to bring about change. A war, however, is about people’s suffering, and the evocative images taken often result in change. One such historic image is of the ‘Napalm Girl’, a nine-year-old girl running naked, along with other children, on a road after being severely burnt on her back by a South Vietnamese napalm attack.
Ut was 16 when his brother, Huỳnh Thanh Mỹ , a photographer, died after Viet Cong guerrillas ran over an American convoy in which Thanh Mỹ was embedded. After his brother’s death, Ut approached the late Horst Faas, photo editor for AP’s Saigon bureau, to ask for work. Faas, however, turned him down, saying that the family had already lost one son and he didn’t want them losing another. Ut was insistent on joining AP and was finally given the job of a darkroom assistant.
Ut retired from AP last year and currently lives in Los Angles. In 2007, Ut’s photograph of Paris Hilton sobbing after being arrested made it to the front of several newspapers. According to Ut, a photographer must go on working, documenting the world and report on issues no matter what they may be.
After nearly four years of doing that job, Ut picked up a camera. “There were plenty of cameras of different brands at the AP office in Saigon, one could pick up any and jump to work,” Ut told The Wire. “Initially, I was not allowed to go to the conflict zones and concentrated on city life. Daily life images interested Western readers and my job was to roam around the city on my motorcycle and take pictures of markets and people.”
The Terror of War: Nick Ut’s "Napalm Girl" (1972) Nick later said. “I wanted to stop this war. I hated war. My brother told me “I hope one day you have a picture to stops the war””. On June 8, 1972 Nick Ut took just such a picture, a photograph that stopped the war.
The Terror of War: Nick Ut’s "Napalm Girl" (1972) When he sent his picture to the AP’s office, the photo was about to be rejected because the rules for publishing nudity were very strict.
On June 7, Ut heard about fighting in Trảng Bàng. He photographed the refugees and planes dropping bombs. The civilians were caught in between North Vietnamese soldiers who were trying to take control of the village and South Vietnamese troops who were defending it.
As the bombs were exploding everywhere the villagers ran out from the temple as they thought it would also be targeted . Suddenly another plane dropped napalm bombs. People were running out of the location hit by the bomb. Women were carrying burned children.
He spent more than 50 years as a photojournalist, photographing famous events, politics and celebrities. However, his best known photo was actually taken at the beginning of his career and in my opinion had the biggest impact. Ut won a World Press Photo and the Pulitzer Prize for the picture in 1973.
The camera still exists and is stored in a museum in Washington DC. On June 7, Ut heard about fighting in Trảng Bàng. He photographed the refugees and planes dropping bombs.
Ut won a World Press Photo and the Pulitzer Prize for the picture in 1973. In 2012 he was inducted by the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism. Kim Phuc survived, and she and Nick Ut met again after the Vietnam conflict.
The “Napalm Girl” photo was usually taken as an example to illustrate the terror of war and the valuable role of a photograph’s message. Last November, I had a chance to connect with photojournalist Nick Út in Los Angeles, California. We got a hospitality interview about this photo.
Nick was working for the Associated Press at the time he snapped the famous “Napalm Girl” photo. His photograph won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and was named a picture that changed the war in Vietnam.
With his insistence, Nick got his first job in the darkroom, and not long after that, he became a war correspondent like his brother. He had fulfilled his brother’s dream, which was to create photos that could change the war.
Last October, the “Napalm Girl” photo was voted the most powerful news image of the last 50 years. In a poll conducted by the History Channel among British audiences, this picture topped the list of photographs that changed the world. It won 37 percent of the vote. The photo is also on TIME’s list of 100 most influential photographs ever taken.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning photo “Napalm Girl” shot by Nick Út in 1972.
The VNA often hid among the villagers because it helped avoid airstrikes and artillery.
Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, runs near Trang Bang, Vietnam, after an aerial napalm attack on June 8, 1972. Nick Ut / AP file. He detailed the attack in an Instagram post. "He knocked me down and hurt my ribs, back and left leg.
Na Son Nguyen / AP file. Jan. 16, 2021, 11:45 AM PST. By Minyvonne Burke. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who made the famed napalm girl photo during the Vietnam War was attacked in Washington, D.C. The photographer, Nick Ut, was headed to dinner Thursday night with a friend when someone came up to him and punched him, ...
The Pulitzer Prize-winner had received the National Medal of Arts at the White House the day before. Associated Press photographer Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut visits Kim Phuc's house near the place where he made his famous Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of her as a terrified 9-year-old in Trang Bang, Tay Ninh province, Vietnam, on March 29, 2012.
Ut became famous for a 1972 photograph he made during the Vietnam War of 9-year-old Kim Phuc running down a street following a napalm attack. After taking the photo, he rushed the girl to the hospital, where doctors were able to save her, according to The Associated Press.
He said the suspect was caught by police. The day before the attack, Ut had received the National Medal of Arts award from President Donald Trump. The Secret Service did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday and it's not clear whether Ut was targeted or the attack was random.
On June 8, 1972, Ut, who did not immediately return a request for comment Friday, was outside Trang Bang, about 25 miles northwest of Saigon, when the South Vietnamese air force mistakenly dropped a load of napalm on the village.
Ut’s photo of the raw impact of conflict underscored that the war was doing more harm than good. It also sparked newsroom debates about running a photo with nudity, pushing many publications, including the New York Times, to override their policies.
South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Vietcong hiding places on June 8, 1972.
Ut took Kim Phuc to a hospital, where he learned that she might not survive the third-degree burns covering 30 percent of her body. So with the help of colleagues he got her transferred to an American facility for treatment that saved her life.
The picture, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut , has become an icon of conflict photography.
When President Richard Nixon wondered if the photo was fake, Ut commented, “The horror of the Vietnam War recorded by me did not have to be fixed.” In 1973 the Pulitzer committee agreed and awarded him its prize. That same year, America’s involvement in the war ended.
Napalm Girl, originally called The Terror of War (1972)—as one of the most symbolic photographs of the most controversial war the United States fought, is representative of the media’s depiction of the conflict overall. Media depiction of the conflict is said to have been a crucial element in the perception of the war and in turning ...
Sociologist E. M. Schreiber , writing in 1976, believed that media’s weakening support for the war was a major aspect in the decline of public support but dismisses anti-war movements as a plausible argument to explain the shift in public opinion in the United States.
Often called “the living room war,” Vietnam was a watershed moment in the media coverage of war. With the rising popularity of television, news coverage now made it into the homes of millions of Americans who witnessed the atrocities of the conflict on CBS’s evening news. But more memorable than the moving image were the stills that flooded the screens, newspaper and magazines. Hal Buell, director of photography in the AP, believed that as “dramatic as it was, television footage in what was called the ‘living room war’ never matched the compelling still photos that, over and over, revealed the bitter nature of the Vietnam conflict.” 4 In her 1977 book On Photography, critic Susan Sontag indicates that “a naked South Vietnamese child just sprayed by American napalm, running down a highway toward the camera, her arms open, screaming with pain—probably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities.” 5 The unparalleled power of photographs wasn’t simply because the camera had become “the tool of choice for photojournalists,” as Pyle attests, but because photographs, as Sontag described, “are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Television is a stream of underselected images, each of which cancels its predecessor. Each still photograph is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.” 6,7 Together with Nick Ut’s picture, Eddie Adams’s of General Nguen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong Prisoner in Saigon is probably the other most unforgettable image of the Vietnam War, and it has been seen by many. However, not as many are aware that there is film footage of that same incident, taken by NBC cameraman Vo Suu. 8 The discrepancy in the fame of the still versus moving image coverage of the event is very telling of the lasting effect different media have. Additionally, a lot of footage and many images of the conflict were deemed inappropriate to be featured during primetime on news channels: “television, in other words, was forced to sanitize combat photography because of audience considerations.” 9 Hence, the more revolting images tended to appear in print instead.
The Associated Press (AP), founded in 1846 in New York City, is a news cooperative owned by newspapers, radio and television stations that work together to produce global reports. A 2013 New York Times article by Richard Pyle about Vietnam War photos that made a difference explains that photojournalism became a “dominant force in global journalism” during the Vietnam War. 1 The AP bureau in Saigon “was the largest and most experienced news unit” and combined with the lack of censorship, it was able to capture images of a terrorized nation and expose it to the world. The AP won six Pulitzer prizes, and four were for photographs that today circulate as visual symbols of the war and its devastating effect on civilians. 2 If there is one image that marked the controversial conflict, that shocked a nation and was widely distributed by major outlets, it was Nick Ut’s now iconic Napalm Girl.
The AP won six Pulitzer prizes, and four were for photographs that today circulate as visual symbols of the war and its devastating effect on civilians. 2 If there is one image that marked the controversial conflict, that shocked a nation and was widely distributed by major outlets, it was Nick Ut’s now iconic Napalm Girl.
Even though iconic images such as Napalm Girl might not have caused the change in public opinion, that doesn’t mean that images such as Napalm Girl didn’t in some way contribute to the people’s increasing concerns with the war.
A picture is worth a thousand words . When we imagine a black-and-white image of an agonized little naked girl—arms spread out—running among other children with a blazing village in the backdrop, even those unfamiliar with the incident’s context would recall the picture of the Napalm Girl, shot by photojournalist Nick Ut during the Vietnam War. Photography’s powerful ability to tell a story, stir emotion, and capture a moment allows an image to transcend time and convey messages in a universal language. That doesn’t mean that images have claims to the truth, nor can the meaning of a picture be divorced from the perception of its observer. In much the same way we still listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine” or have a clear image of Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans painting, we are exposed to iconic photographs from the past. The timeless nature of these works of art lies, to some degree, on the impact they had in their own time. Napalm Girl, originally called The Terror of War (1972)—as one of the most symbolic photographs of the most controversial war the United States fought, is representative of the media’s depiction of the conflict overall. Media depiction of the conflict is said to have been a crucial element in the perception of the war and in turning the public against it. Featured on the front page of several newspapers including the New York Times and subsequently awarded the 1973 Pulitzer Prize, Nick Ut’s memorable Napalm Girl shocked its audience and is claimed to have shifted public opinion and perhaps even the course of the war. But to what extent can a still image really be held accountable for influencing the standpoint of a nation and its growing disenchantment with the Vietnam War? Scholars have claimed that the undeniable emotions that the picture triggers had a substantial impact on Americans’ stance and in turn the outcome of the war. However, counterclaims raise doubts, arguing the lack of (or even contradicting) evidence used to support these statements. Could war images like Napalm Girl, however, have had some indirect, perhaps immeasurable, impact on reinforcing antiwar sentiments?
It’s a photograph that grabs you and never leaves you once you’ve seen it. The image taken by AP’s Nick Ut on June 8th, 1972, shows crying children running away from their village after a Napalm aerial attack by South Vietnamese Forces.
He drove Phuc to a small hospital, where he was told the small girl was too far gone to save. He showed them his American press badge and demanded the doctors treat the girl and left, assuring them that the girl would not be forgotten. “I cried when I saw her running,” said Ut.
American soldiers thank him; because of his picture, they say, they got to come home to their families. Men of a certain age who narrowly avoided the draft confess to him that, because of Napalm Girl, they didn't have to go to Vietnam. Ut's good luck, apparently, was contagious.
For his part, Ut says, only half-jokingly, that his brother's ghost protected him. He is superstitious about numbers. On the negatives, Napalm Girl was picture No. 7. Ut's brother was born seventh.
Many photojournalists were killed in Vietnam — 135 total, according to Faas' count. By Ut's estimate, 90 percent of the AP photographers who covered the war got shot while there. Ut had the bad luck to get injured but the good luck not to wind up dead.
Faas reluctantly hired Ut to work the darkroom. He'd make prints, process film, be a gopher. Soon he was shooting feature photos around Saigon City — urchins, the black market, politics.
Most of the cops know him by sight. Other photographers follow him around, as they did in Vietnam. “They say, 'Nicky knows everything,' ” he explains. In Saigon, he was one of the few local guys shooting the war. In Los Angeles, he's an old hand at covering the court scene.
Later, Ut would say that when he pressed the shutter button, he thought of his brother. That he actually heard La's voice whispering, “Stop the war.”
Ut grew up in Long An, a village near Saigon, the second youngest of 11 siblings. As a teenager, he lived with his older brother La, a photographer with AP's Saigon bureau. Before that, La had been a movie star. “Every Vietnamese actress knew who he is,” Ut says. “He was handsome.