After 50 years, why is there a dispute over who clicked the iconic 'Napalm Girl' photo?

There are some images that cut across time and geography and become a part of our memory. They can’t be unseen, neither can they be forgotten. One such image is that of ‘Napalm Girl’ — an image of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack in South Vietnam in 1972.

However, a new documentary, titled The Stringer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday night (January 25) now disputes the credit of the photograph. While historically, the image has been credited to being taken by Associated Press (AP) staff photographer Nick Ut, the new documentary claims that the photo was actually taken by another photographer on the scene that day: Nguyen Thành Nghe, a Vietnamese driver for NBC who sold his photos to the AP as a freelancer, or “stringer”.

This has led to everyone asking: ‘Who really took the famous “Napalm Girl” photograph?

The Napalm Girl photo and its story

The searing image, now colloquially known as Napalm Girl, shows nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running naked and screaming down a road in Trang Bang, South Vietnam. The image was shot on June 8, 1972 when South Vietnamese armed forces mistakenly dropped napalm on Trang Bang, outside Saigon. Terrified and badly burnt villagers fled down the road, including tiny Kim Phuc.

The image was published by newspapers and magazines around the world, and contributed to the growing international movement of protest against the war. Her three-year old brother died after the attack, but Kim Phuc recovered, settled in Canada with her husband and children and became a Unesco goodwill ambassador.

At the time, it was credited to Nick Ut from the Associated Press. He was awarded a Pulitzer prize for it a year later. He worked at the AP for 40 years until retiring in 2017.

Questioning the authorship of ‘Napalm Girl’

However, more than 50 years later, the documentary, The Stringer, challenges if Ut was, in fact, the man behind the image. In the movie, Nguyen Thanh Nghe claims he took the photo that day when he went to the town of Trang Bang as a driver for an NBC news crew.

He said he sold his image to the AP for $20 (Rs 1,700), and they gave him a print of the photo that his wife later destroyed.

But how did this claim originate? The movie’s main source is Carl Robinson, then an AP photo editor in Saigon. In the film, Robinson says he was ordered to write a photo caption attributing the photo to Ut by Horst Faas, AP’s two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning chief of photos in Saigon.

“I started writing the caption… Horst Faas, who had been standing right next to me, said ‘Nick Ut. Make it Nick Ut’,” says Robinson. Both Faas and Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed the film, are dead. Robinson, 81, was dismissed by the AP in 1978.

After interviewing Robinson, the filmmakers identified the long-lost name of a Vietnamese freelance photographer who is visible in other photos of the infamous scene at Trang Bang on June 8, 1972.

They eventually tracked down Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who states in the film that he is certain he took the photo. “Nick Ut came with me on the assignment. But he didn’t take that photo… That photo was mine,” he says.

When asked why he chose now to break his silence, Robinson told the Sundance moderator, “I didn’t want to die before this story came out. I wanted to find (Nghe) and say sorry.”

In addition to Robinson, the movie’s makers, which was led by husband-and-wife team of Gary Knight, founder of the VII Foundation, and producer Fiona Turner, investigated the photo’s origins for two years.

This included a French forensics team, INDEX, to help determine the likelihood of whether Ut had been in a position to take the photo. After much studying, the forensics team concluded that it was highly unlikely that Ut could have done it.

However, despite it all, there are other witnesses who claim otherwise and reassert that it was Ut who snapped the image. This includes none other than the subject herself, Phuc, who says she is certain that Ut took the photo. “I have refused to participate in this outrageous and false attack on Nick Ut raised by Mr Robinson over the past years,” she is quoted as telling Vanity Fair. “[Ut] was not just a photographer. He is my hero for putting down his camera and taking me to the hospital that day and saving my life.”

AP, filmmakers speak up

When asked about the motivation to make this movie, Gary Knight said, “The film grapples with questions of authorship, racial injustice and journalistic ethics while shining a light on the fundamental yet often unrecognised contributions of local freelancers who provide the information we need to understand how events worldwide impact us all.”

Meanwhile, AP has maintained that it has carried out its own investigation into the matter and said it has no reason to conclude that anyone other than the long-credited photographer, Nick Ut, made the picture.

The AP also said it was calling on the filmmakers to release their contributors from non-disclosure agreements for the film, including Nghe. It also called on the filmmakers to share a visual analysis they commissioned — and the film itself. “We cannot state more clearly that The Associated Press is only interested in the facts and a truthful history of this iconic photo,” the agency said.

With inputs from AP and AFP