It is one of the 20th century’s most memorable images: a naked girl, screaming, running from a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War. More than a half-century later, a new documentary is calling into question who took it — and the retired Associated Press photographer long credited for the photo insists it was his, while his longtime employer says it has no evidence of anyone else being behind the camera.
The film about the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture, “The Stringer,” is scheduled to debut next week at the Sundance Film Festival. Both photographer Nick Ut and his longtime employer are contesting it vigorously, and Ut’s lawyer is seeking to block the premiere, threatening a defamation lawsuit. The AP, which conducted its own investigation over six months, concluded it has “no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.”
The picture of Kim Phuc running down a road in the village of Trang Bang, crying and naked because she had taken off clothes burning from napalm, instantly became symbolic of the horrors of the Vietnam War.
Taken on June 8, 1972, the photo is credited to Ut, then a 21-year-old staffer in AP’s Saigon bureau. He was awarded the Pulitzer a year later. Now 73, he moved to California after the war and worked for the AP for 40 years until retiring in 2017.
The film’s allegations open an unexpected new chapter for an image that, within hours of it being taken, was beamed around the planet and became one of the most indelible photographs of both the Vietnam War and the turbulent century that produced it. Whatever the truth, the film’s investigations apparently relate only to the identity of the photographer and not the image’s overall authenticity.
The dispute puts the filmmakers, who call the episode “a scandal behind the making of one of the most-recognized photographs of the 20th century,” at odds with Ut, whose work that day defined his career. It also puts them at cross purposes with the AP, a global news organization for whom accuracy is a foundational part of the business model.
How did the questioning of the photo begin?
It’s difficult, so many years later, to overestimate the wallop that this particular image packed. Ron Burnett, an expert on images and former president of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, called it “earth-shattering.”
“It changed the way photos have always been thought about and broke the rules for how much violence you can show to the public,” Burnett said.
The photo sat unchallenged for much of its 53-year existence. All these years later, a counter-narrative has emerged that it was instead taken by another person, someone who worked for NBC News at the time and also lives now in California. The person allegedly had delivered his film to the AP’s office as a “stringer,” a non-staff member who provides material to a news organization.
The husband-and-wife team of Gary Knight, founder of the VII Foundation, and producer Fiona Turner are behind the film. On his website, Knight described “The Stringer” as “a story that many in our profession did not want told, and some of them continue to go to great lengths to make sure isn’t told.”
“The film grapples with questions of authorship, racial injustice and journalistic ethics while shining a light on the fundamental yet often unrecognized contributions of local freelancers who provide the information we need to understand how events worldwide impact us all,” Knight wrote.
Knight did not return a message seeking comment from the AP on Thursday. A representative from Sundance also did not return a message about a cease-and-desist letter from Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, trying to stop the film’s airing. Hornstein would not make Ut available for an interview, saying he anticipated future litigation.
Knight and Turner met with AP in London last June about the allegations. According to the AP, filmmakers requested the news organization sign a non-disclosure agreement before they provided their evidence. AP declined.
That hampered the AP’s own investigation, along with the passage of time. Horst Faas, chief of photos for AP in Saigon in 1972, and Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed Ut’s film, are both dead. Many of the Saigon bureau’s records were lost when communists took over the city, including any dealings with “the stringer.” Negatives of photos used back then are preserved in AP’s corporate archives in New York, but they provided no insight for the investigation.
Still, the AP decided to release its own findings before seeing “The Stringer” and the details of the claim that it is making. “AP stands prepared to review any evidence and take whatever remedial action might be needed if their thesis is proved true,” the news organization said.
Some who were there are sure about what happened
The AP said it spoke to seven surviving people who were in Trang Bang or AP’s Saigon bureau that day, and all maintain they have no reason to doubt their own conclusions that Ut had taken the photo.
One was Fox Butterfield, a renowned longtime New York Times reporter, who also said that he was contacted by Turner for the documentary. “I told them what my memory was and they didn’t like it, but they just went ahead anyway,” Butterfield told AP.
Another was photographer David Burnett, who said he witnessed Ut and Alexander Shimkin, a freelance photographer working primarily for Newsweek, taking photos as Kim Phuc and other children emerged from smoke following an attack. Shimkin was killed in Vietnam a month later, according to the investigation.
A key source for the story in “The Stringer” is Carl Robinson, then a photo editor for the AP in Saigon, who was initially overruled in his judgment not to use the picture. AP reached out to Robinson as part of its probe, but he said he had signed an NDA with Knight and the VII Foundation. Knight followed up, saying Robinson would only speak off the record, which the AP concluded would have prevented the news organization from setting the record straight.
Robinson did not immediately reply to an email seeking comment on Thursday.
On duty that day in Saigon, Robinson had concluded that Ut’s picture could not be used because it would have violated standards prohibiting nudity. But Faas overruled him, and senior AP editors in New York decided to run the picture for what it conveyed about war.
The AP questioned Robinson’s long silence in contradicting Ut’s photo credit, and showed a photo from its archives of Robinson with champagne toasting Ut’s Pulitzer Prize. In a 2005 interview with corporate archives, Robinson said he thought AP “created a monster” when it distributed the photo because much of the world’s sympathies were focused on one victim, instead of war victims more broadly.
Former AP correspondent Peter Arnett, who believes Ut made the image, said Robinson wrote to him after Faas’ death in 2012 to make the allegation that Ut had not taken it; he said he did not want to do it while Faas was still alive. According to the AP investigation, Arnett said Robinson told him that Ut had “gone all Hollywood” and he didn’t like it.
Hornstein characterized Robinson, who was dismissed by AP in 1978, as “a guy with a 50-year vendetta against the AP.” He also questioned the long silence by the man supposedly identified in the documentary as the person who really took the photo.
The lawyer also produced a statement from Kim Phuc, who said that while she has no memory of that day, her uncle has repeatedly told her that Ut took the picture and that she had no reason to doubt him. Ut also took her to the nearest hospital after the photo was taken, she wrote.
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