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Today is World Photography Day, the annual celebration raising awareness about the importance of photography.<\/p>\n
The day dates back to 1837, when Frenchmen Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nicephore Niepce created the Daguerreotype, the first publicly available photographic process. It takes place on this day to commemorates the declaration of patent for the invention by the French government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year, the Euronews Culture team handpicked their favourite photos<\/a>. This year, we focus on one specific shot, which not only feels as depressingly relevant today as it was the day it was taken, but also inspired a filmmaker whose film is\u00a0one of this year\u2019s unmissable cinematic offerings…\u00a0<\/p>\n The photo above is \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d – also known as \u201cNapalm Girl\u201d.<\/p>\n It was taken on 8 June 1972 by Nick Ut, a Vietnamese AP staffer working in the Saigon bureau at the time.<\/p>\n The shot features severely burned children, with a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Th\u1ecb Kim Ph\u00fac, running toward the camera as she flees a \u201cfriendly fire\u201d South Vietnamese napalm strike.<\/p>\n Once Ut had taken the shot, he put down his camera and took\u00a0the young girl\u00a0and other children to a hospital. There, he\u00a0was told that she might not survive because she had suffered third-degree burns on thirty per cent of her body. He helped to transfer her to an American hospital, where they were able to save her life.<\/p>\n The photographer\u00a0sent his picture to the AP\u2019s office. It was about to be rejected because the rules for publishing nudity were very strict. Ultimately, the editors agreed that the value of the picture was\u00a0more important\u00a0than any reservations about nudity.<\/p>\n Their call turned out to be the right one, as Ut\u2019s horrifying photograph appeared on the front pages of leading US newspapers and ended up winning both World Press Photo of the Year\u00a0and the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography.<\/p>\n However, \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d isn\u2019t without controversy. \u00a0<\/p>\n Then-US President Richard Nixon doubted the photo\u2019s authenticity, suggesting that it was a fake. How times change… However, by 1972, the American public opinion had already turned against Nixon and US involvement in the conflict.<\/p>\n Ut’s photo has been credited \u2013 apocryphally \u2013 as the shot that accelerated the end of the Vietnam War. Regardless of its impact at the time on the conflict, \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d\u00a0did become a symbol of anti-war sentiment.<\/p>\n Phan Th\u1ecb Kim Ph\u00fac survived her injuries and met with Ut after the Vietnam war. In 2022, she posed in front of a plane transporting refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine to Canada (see below), showing that humanity singularly fails in learning the lessons of the past.<\/p>\n She has continued to give interviews about the image, using her platform to support survivors of war, raise awareness about humanitarian crises, and speak about the hope that images like Ut\u2019s have the power to change mentalities.<\/p>\n Ut moved to the US after Saigon fell and spent more than 50 years as a photojournalist. In 2012, he\u00a0was inducted by the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism.<\/p>\n His photograph, however, remains surrounded by controversy. <\/p>\n In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg sought to censor \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d on Facebook. Following widespread criticism, he backed down.<\/p>\n This year, a documentary titled The Stringer explored the authorship of the photograph and the possibility that stringer Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 may have taken the photo, and not Ut. <\/p>\n Both AP and World Press Photo started investigations. AP denied the claim\u00a0and concluded that there was no convincing evidence surrounding the identity of the photographer. AP did not change the credit for the photo. They released a statement saying: \u201cFollowing a nearly year-long investigation, the AP has concluded that there is not the definitive evidence required by AP\u2019s standards to change the credit of the 53-year-old photograph.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n As for World Press Photo, the organisation presented their findings in May and suspended the attribution of authorship to Ut as uncertainty remained.\u00a0<\/p>\n Regardless, \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d remains to this day a powerful indictment of the effects of war on children and innocent victims. It – and conflict photography in general – still feels as vital today as it was in Vietnam, considering the atrocities still being committed in conflicts and genocides around the world. \u00a0<\/p>\n Photographs like\u00a0\u201cThe Terror of War\u201d have the power to tell the truth and counter those who seek to bury their crimes under falsehoods. They also have the power to inspire other creatives around the world, including filmmakers. \u00a0<\/p>\n This year\u2019s breakout cinematic hit \u2013 both commercially and critically – has been Zach Cregger\u2019s Weapons<\/a>. It is a mystery horror gem that takes place in the aftermath of the disappearance of 17 children, who all leave their homes one night at precisely 2:17am. They run into the night and are never seen or heard from again.<\/p>\n Weapons thrives on certain ambiguities, which not only feed a potent sense of\u00a0dread but also allow audience members to reach their own conclusions as to the metaphorical content of the story and its execution.<\/p>\n One lasting image from Cregger\u2019s film is the mysterious and unnatural stance the children adopt when they disappear from their homes: they run into the darkness of night, arms outstretched in a downward \u2018v\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n It turns out that this eerie pose is tied to \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d.<\/p>\n In an interview with\u00a0Entertainment Weekly<\/a>,\u00a0Cregger explained that “from the first moment, I was like, ‘And they run like that’,” citing a possible subconscious inspiration from\u00a0the famous photograph.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s that terrible photo of that girl in Vietnam with the napalm burn,\u201d said Cregger. \u201cI think that image is so awful, and the way she’s holding her arms out just killed me. I think there’s something really upsetting about that posture. If I had to guess, that might be where the seed is from. I don’t know. But there was no second-guessing that pose. I knew that they would run that way.\u201d<\/p>\n Cregger also pointed out a connection between the film’s title and the children’s running pose,\u00a0sharing: “My wife told me her friend called and was like, ‘Do you know the etymology of that word means ‘small arms’?”<\/p>\n In our review of the \u201cmetaphorically haunting\u201d Weapons, we said: \u201cWhen the film goes for scary, it\u2019ll make you jump out of your skin. When it decides to crawl under said skin, it\u2019ll make you meditate on the \u201cweapons\u201d and \u201ctargets\u201d in even the most seemingly safe all-American suburban spaces, and how paranoia can be… well, weaponised.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Read the full review here<\/a>, as well as the reason why a planned prequel is a terrible idea<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The film\u2019s title and its layered themes are inextricably linked to the central image of the children\u2019s running pose, and by linking this imagery with the iconic historical photograph, Cregger shows that the posture isn\u2019t simply an artistic flourish. <\/p>\n He creates subtext tied to loss, a historical metaphor surrounding trauma, and a deeper reflection on the violence children are subjected to. As the film states, there are \u201cweapons\u201d and \u201ctargets\u201d in day-to-day life. Whether audiences interpret this as Weapons being a commentary about school shootings in US schools, a meditation about inherited generational trauma, or even an unsettling allegory on how young minds are being\u00a0targeted\u00a0by today\u2019s toxic online culture in order to transform them into weapons that peddle hate-fuelled rhetoric full of racism, misogyny and unempathetic bile, no one is wrong.<\/p>\n There is no such thing as \u2018correct\u2019 and \u2018incorrect\u2019 when it comes to appreciating a film. Arguing the contrary is a fool\u2019s errand. Audiences take from a cinema experience what they bring to it, and reducing a piece of art to one answer is reductive in the extreme. And on the other side of the screen, if a filmmaker needs to tell you what you should get from their film, then they have singularly failed to appreciate the richness of their craft.<\/p>\n However, what cannot be denied is the fact that artistic disciplines communicate with each other through time and that the staying power of the historical image \u201cThe Terror of War\u201d continues to resonate to this day. As opposed to Weapons, what it continues to tell us can be reduced to ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ binaries.<\/p>\n Photography – in all its forms \u2013 has the capacity to expose, inspire and in the best of cases, change. Whether it\u2019s an casual observer contemplating a snap or a filmmaker drawing inspiration from a shot and, through his art, inspiring those unaware of his conscious or subconscious reference points to seek them out in order to better educate themselves on real-life horrors, photos matter. In increasingly troubled and horrific times, they matter now more than ever. Even if they were taken more than half a century ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ADVERTISEMENT Today is World Photography Day, the annual celebration raising awareness about the importance of photography. 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