{"id":137732,"date":"2025-05-17T05:05:01","date_gmt":"2025-05-17T05:05:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/napalm-girl-may-be-work-of-different-photographer-world-press-photo-says-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2025-05-17T05:05:01","modified_gmt":"2025-05-17T05:05:01","slug":"napalm-girl-may-be-work-of-different-photographer-world-press-photo-says-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/napalm-girl-may-be-work-of-different-photographer-world-press-photo-says-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Napalm Girl\u2019 may be work of different photographer, World Press Photo says – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo from Vietnam war is now at centre of controversy after documentary claimed it was taken by someone else
The World Press Photo group has suspended the attribution of authorship for one on the most famous press photographs ever taken, after a new documentary<\/a> challenged 50 years of accepted journalism history.
The photo, officially titled The Terror of War but colloquially known as Napalm Girl, remains one of the most indelible images of the US war in Vietnam<\/a>. Since its publication in June 1972, it has been officially attributed to Nick Ut, a Vietnamese photographer working with the Associated Press in Saigon.
The AP and Ut have long maintained that Ut, then 21 years old, took the photo, which went on to win the World Press Photo of the Year award in 1973 and established Ut as a venerable photojournalist.
But a recent documentary challenged that history, instead proposing that the photo, which depicts a naked nine-year-old girl named Phan Thi Kim Phuc as she flees a napalm attack in the South Vietnamese village of Tr\u1ea3ng B\u00e0ng, was taken by a man named Nguyen Th\u00e0nh Nghe. The Stringer<\/a>, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in January, claimed that Nghe, a stringer for NBC who was driving that day and who often sold photos to the AP on a freelance basis, was denied credit in favor of Ut because he was not AP staff.
The film prompted \u201cdeep reflection\u201d at World Press Photo, which conducted its own investigation, the results of which were made public on Friday 16 May. The in-house analysis, conducted between January and May 2025, concluded \u201cbased on analysis of location, distance, and the camera used on that day\u201d that \u201cphotographers Nguy\u1ec5n Th\u00e0nh Ngh\u1ec7 or Hu\u1ef3nh C\u00f4ng Ph\u00fac may have been better positioned to take the photograph than Nick \u00dat.\u201d
The suspension only applies to the photo\u2019s authorship, and does not rescind the 1973 Photo of the Year award. \u201cThe photograph itself remains undisputed,\u201d the group said, \u201cand the World Press Photo award for this significant photo of a major moment in 20th century history remains a fact.\u201d
\u201cBased on these findings and according to our values of accuracy, trustworthiness and diversity, we draw conclusions with regards to attribution,\u201d Joumana El Zein Khoury, the group\u2019s executive director, said in a press release. \u201cIt is important to state that the picture itself is undisputed and it is without question that this photograph represents a real moment in history that continues to reverberate in Vietnam, the United States, and globally.\u201d
Earlier this month, the Associated Press announced<\/a> that it found \u201cno definitive evidence\u201d to warrant changing the photo\u2019s authorship, and released a 96-page report<\/a> on the matter \u2013 its second in four months<\/a> \u2013 based on its own internal investigation. The AP concluded that it was \u201cpossible\u201d Ut took the photo, and found no evidence that Nguyen took it instead. The matter was unable to be proven conclusively, it added, due to the passage of time, the absence of key evidence, the limitations of technology and the deaths of several key people involved.
\u201cWe left nothing uncovered that we\u2019re aware of and we\u2019ve done it with a great deal of respect to everybody involved,\u201d said Derl McCrudden, an AP vice-president of global news production, in a statement. \u201cIt makes no difference to us if we changed the credit, but it has to be based on facts and evidence. And there is no definitive evidence proving that Nick Ut did not take this picture.\u201d
The Stringer, directed by Bao Nguyen, enlisted several witnesses to argue that Nghe sold the photo to the Saigon bureau photo chief, Horst Faas, for $20 and a print, including Nghe\u2019s brother, who claims he brought the film to the AP; Nghe\u2019s daughter Jannie; Carl Robinson, a longtime AP photo editor in Saigon who first contacted the film-makers; and several of Robinson\u2019s former photojournalist colleagues. The investigators also consulted forensic experts with the French NGO Index<\/a>, who found it \u201chighly unlikely\u201d that Ut took the photo based on the other images AP credited to him that day.
The AP conducted its own forensic investigation involving further interviews, the examination of cameras and surviving negatives from that day, and a 3D model of the scene. The resulting report revealed \u201cinconsistencies on both sides\u201d but concluded that buying Nghe\u2019s story would \u201crequire several leaps of faith\u201d, such as believing that the only time he sold photos to a western news agency, it turned out to be one of the most famous images of the 20th century.
Nghe, who made a surprise appearance at the Stringer\u2019s Sundance premiere, confirms his account in the film. Ut, meanwhile, continues to maintain his authorship, and told the AP that the dispute \u201chas been very difficult for me and has caused great pain\u201d.
But for World Press Photo, the official author is now: unknown. \u201cThis remains contested history, and it is possible that the author of the photograph will never be fully confirmed,\u201d the group said. \u201cThe suspension of the authorship attribution stands unless it is proved otherwise.\u201d
<\/span> This article was amended on 16 May 2025. An earlier version described Nguyen Th\u00e0nh Nghe in 1972 as a \u201cdriver for NBC\u201d; he was a stringer for NBC and a freelance photographer who was driving Nick Ut on the day the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc was taken.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo from Vietnam war is now at centre of controversy after documentary claimed it was taken by someone elseThe World Press Photo group has suspended the attribution of authorship for one on the most famous press photographs ever taken, after a new documentary challenged 50 years of accepted journalism history.The photo, officially titled The Terror […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137733,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}