Who Took the ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo?

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Questions about the credit for a famous photograph from the Vietnam War have divided the photojournalism community for months.

A naked girl in anguish and four other youngsters head down a desolate road toward the camera, followed by several soldiers.
The Associated Press is continuing to credit this Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from 1972 to Nick Ut.Credit...Nick Ut/Associated Press

Benjamin Mullin

May 16, 2025Updated 4:54 p.m. ET

The photo is indelible, and its importance unmistakable: a Vietnamese girl burned by napalm, naked and screaming, her arms outstretched in despair. It drove home the consequences of the Vietnam War to readers in the United States, where it won a Pulitzer Prize.

But who took the photo, widely known as Napalm Girl? That is the question dividing the photojournalism community 53 years after it was taken.

The image, from a road in the village of Trang Bang, Vietnam, has been credited to Nick Ut, a photographer who worked for The Associated Press. In the decades since, Mr. Ut has repeatedly talked publicly, in interviews and elsewhere, about his role in capturing the photo and his later friendship with its subject, Kim Phuc Phan Thi.

Yet a documentary that premiered early this year, “The Stringer,” set off investigations into the creator of the image. The film argues that a freelance photographer took the image, and that an Associated Press photo editor misattributed it to Mr. Ut.

On Friday, the World Press Photo Foundation, a prominent international nonprofit, weighed in. It said that a monthslong investigation had found that two other photojournalists “may have been better positioned to take the photograph than Nick Ut” and that it was suspending his credit for the image. That means the credit and caption in its online archives will be updated to include the doubts raised by its investigation.

Mr. Ut’s lawyer, James Hornstein, has repeatedly disputed the film’s claims and called them “defamatory.” He said in a statement that the World Press Photo decision was “deplorable and unprofessional” and “reveals how low the organization has fallen.” Mr. Hornstein declined to make Mr. Ut available for an interview.


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