It is one of the most recognizable photographs of the 20th century: a naked girl \u2013 arms wide, face contorted, skin scorched and peeling \u2013 running toward the camera as she flees a napalm attack in South Vietnam. To her right, a boy\u2019s face is frozen in a Greek tragedy mask of pain. To her left, two other Vietnamese children run away from the bombed village of Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng. Behind them, an indistinguishable group of soldiers and, behind them, a wall of black smoke.<\/p>\n
Within hours of publication in June 1972, the photo, officially titled The Terror of War but colloquially known as Napalm Girl, went the analog version of viral; seen and discussed by millions of people around the world, it\u2019s widely credited with galvanizing public opinion against the US war in Vietnam. Susan Sontag later wrote<\/a> that the horrifically indelible image of nine-year-old Kim Ph\u00fac in distress \u201cprobably did more to increase the public revulsion against the war than a hundred hours of televised barbarities\u201d. Sir Don McCullin, the legendary British photojournalist who covered the conflict, deemed it the single best photograph of what would later be called \u201cThe Television War\u201d. Napalm Girl is, \u201csimply put, one of the most important photographs of anything ever made, and certainly of the Vietnam war\u201d, said Gary Knight, a British photojournalist with decades of combat photography experience.<\/p>\n For 53 years, Napalm Girl was credited to Huynh Cong \u201cNick\u201d \u00dat, a then-21-year-old South Vietnamese photojournalist working for the Associated Press in Saigon. But a controversial new documentary on Netflix<\/a> argues that the iconic photograph long considered the pinnacle of war journalism \u2013 one which brought \u00dat a Pulitzer prize, amid other international acclaim \u2013 was actually taken by a different man on the scene in Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng that day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n According to The Stringer, directed by Bao Nguyen and narrated by Knight, the Terror of War was actually taken by a freelancer, or \u201cstringer\u201d, who sold his photos to the AP. The claim, and the film\u2019s subsequent investigation, originates with a man named Carl Robinson, a former AP photo editor in Saigon who alleges that Horst Faas, the bureau\u2019s legendarily domineering photo chief, ordered him to change the image\u2019s credit from the stringer to \u00dat, the only AP staff photographer on site that day.<\/p>\n Robinson, now in his 80s, emailed Knight out of the blue in 2022, seeking a journalist\u2019s help in finding the unknown photographer \u2013 should he still be alive, he said, he wanted to offer an apology. Knight thought of the freelance photojournalists he met through his non-profit, the VII Foundation \u2013 \u201cthe stringers of today\u201d, who, like Vietnamese freelancers during the war, are \u201coften overlooked. Their work is often questioned. They work under much more difficult circumstances. They\u2019re not insured. They don\u2019t have pensions. They don\u2019t have support. They often don\u2019t have good equipment, and they are incredibly vulnerable photographing in their own communities.\u201d<\/p>\n Knight wondered: \u201cWhat must it feel like to be the man who took this photograph, if indeed Nick \u00dat didn\u2019t take it?\u201d As a photographer, he imagined, it would be extraordinarily painful. As a student of photojournalism, particularly the vaunted war photography of Vietnam, it would be earth-shattering, perhaps reputation-threatening. The hallowed legacy of the photograph among Vietnamese-Americans is such that Nguyen, whose parents emigrated during the war, was hesitant to take on the project. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to disrupt this long-held narrative that Nick had taken the photograph,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t want to disrupt the status quo of a community that always looked up to this achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n But both Knight and Nguyen agreed: it was worth asking the question. \u201cIf journalists are going to hold everybody else in the world to account,\u201d said Knight, \u201cwe have to be able to ask difficult questions of ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n The Stringer follows Knight, along with fellow journalists Fiona Turner, Terri Lichstein and L\u00ea V\u00e2n, as they pursue their own investigation, from eyewitness interviews, to call-outs in present-day Ho Chi Minh City, to archival research from other footage taken that day (the film-makers say they were not given access to the AP\u2019s archive). Their efforts eventually yield a name: Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7, a driver for NBC that day who occasionally sold photographs to international news outlets as a freelancer. In the film, an emotional Ngh\u1ec7, now also in his 80s and living in California, attests that he sold the photograph to the AP for $20 and a print, only to be haunted by the lack of credit for decades.<\/p>\n Ngh\u1ec7 appears, in the film, reserved and thoughtful, but his story proved incendiary within the world of photojournalism. Days before The Stringer\u2019s premiere<\/a> at the Sundance film festival in January \u2013 in which an emotional Ngh\u1ec7 appeared as a surprise guest, assuring through a translator that \u201cI took the photo\u201d \u2013 the AP published a lengthy report<\/a> disputing the film\u2019s account via its own internal analysis, describing Robinson as a \u201cdisgruntled\u201d former employee, and standing by \u00dat, who retired from a distinguished career with the organization in 2017. Several prominent photojournalists dismissed Ngh\u1ec7\u2019s claim outright, and campaigned against the film\u2019s distribution; others expressed concern, given the current political environment, over any challenge to journalistic credibility. \u201cWe had people suggesting that we should drop the investigation because it was a bad time for journalism,\u201d Knight recalled. \u201cBut when is there ever a good time?\u201d<\/p>\n Kim Phuc, center, runs with her brothers and cousins, followed by South Vietnamese forces, down Route 1 near Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng after a South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on its own troops and civilians on 8 June 1972. Photograph: Nick Ut\/AP<\/p>\n \u201cThe investigation has to live independently of those kinds of concerns,\u201d he added. \u201cThe process of self-examination might be inconvenient, but that doesn\u2019t mean it shouldn\u2019t be done.\u201d<\/p>\n In May, the AP released a more extensive report and visual analysis<\/a> with new insights \u2013 for one, as argued in The Stringer, the photograph was probably captured by a Pentax camera, not a Leica as \u00dat has long claimed. The internal study, based on \u201cextensive visual analysis, interviews with witnesses and examination of all available photos\u201d concluded that it was \u201cpossible\u201d \u00dat took the photo. \u201cNone of this material proves anyone else did,\u201d the AP said, thus the findings did not meet the \u201cdefinitive evidence\u201d required by its standards to change the credit. (\u00dat, who declined to participate in The Stringer, has categorically denied the film\u2019s claims, maintained authorship, and threatened to sue for defamation.)<\/p>\n Days later, World Press Photo, which awarded Napalm Girl the 1973 Photo of the Year award, released<\/a> its own independent investigation concluding that two people \u2013 Ngh\u1ec7 and photographer Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4ng Ph\u00fac \u2013 were better positioned to take the photo. The organization rescinded \u00dat\u2019s credit but left official authorship unknown, with an open-ended epigraph: \u201cThis remains contested history, and it is possible that the author of the photograph will never be fully confirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n