The picture is seared into our collective unconscious. Her body has been burned by the flammable scatter of an incendiary bomb. Only moments before, pilots had mistakenly dropped their fiery payload on allied positions, severely injuring civilians. So primal is the sceneβan unclothed girl and four other children fleeing in pain and panic past men in uniform; a dark sky roiling with apocalyptic bomb cloudsβthat it has endured for decades as an anti-war icon.
In the past few weeks, however, the provenance of the image has become the basis of a battle royale all its own. That battle has essentially pitted the Associated Press and a contingent of photojournalists and correspondents against a group of independent filmmakers.
Their disagreement has been brought about by allegations made in a new documentary, The Stringer, which had its world premiere on Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. Representatives from the AP, and Ut himself, vehemently refute that claim, though none of them, as of this writing, has seen the film. The movie asserts that the photograph was instead made by a stringer: a Vietnamese cameraman working for NBC at the time, who submitted his undeveloped film on a freelance basis to the Associated Press office in Saigon.
South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places, June 8, Full-frame version. The AP, according to the documentary, edited the film, selecting an image that was instantly recognized as extraordinary.
The service printed what would become the famous frame, and sent it over the newswires. The picture would run in newspapers around the world. Nick Ut was given credit for the image, and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize for it. The resulting photographic fracas has been intense. On one side is the Associated Press; a group of highly respected veteran journalists who covered the war in Southeast Asia; and Nick Ut then 21, now 73 , a heroic figure in Vietnam and longtime resident of the US whose lawyer tells me is considering litigation.
