He is credited with one of history’s most indelible photos. A new documentary questions who took it

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It’s one of the most memorable images of the 20th century: a naked girl, screaming, fleeing a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War. More than half a century later, a new documentary raises questions about who took this photo. The retired Associated Press photographer who has long been credited with taking the photo insists it is his, while his longtime employer says… He has no evidence that anyone else was behind the photo. camera.

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The film, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning film “The Stringer,” is scheduled to premiere next week at the Sundance Film Festival. Photographer Nick Utt and his longtime employer are vehemently opposed, and Utt’s attorney is seeking to block the premiere, threatening a defamation suit. The AP, which conducted its own investigation over six months, concluded that it had “no reason to believe that anyone other than Ott took the photo.”

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The image of Kim Phuc running down a road in the village of Trang Bang, crying and naked as she removed clothes burned with napalm, immediately became a symbol of the atrocities of the Vietnam War.

Taken on June 8, 1972, the photo is attributed to Ott, then a 21-year-old employee of the AP’s Saigon bureau. He won the Pulitzer Prize a year later. Now 73, he moved to California after the war and worked for the AP for 40 years until his retirement in 2017.

The film’s claims open an unexpected new chapter for an image that was broadcast around the planet within hours of being taken and has become one of the most indelible images of the Vietnam War and the turbulent century that produced it. Whatever the truth, it is clear that the film’s investigations relate only to the identity of the photographer and not to the authenticity of the image in general.

The dispute puts the filmmakers, who called the episode “a scandal behind the making of one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century,” at odds with Ott, whose work that day defined his career. It also pits them against contradictory goals with the Associated Press, a global news organization for which accuracy is a key part of its business model.

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How did the question about the image begin?

It is difficult, after so many years, to overstate the magnitude of this particular image. Ron Burnett, an image expert and former president of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, described it as “earth-shattering.”

“It changed the way images had always been viewed, and it broke the rules about the amount of violence you could show to the public,” Burnett said.

The image remained unchallenged throughout its 53-year existence. All these years later, a counternarrative emerged that it had been picked up instead by someone else, someone who worked for NBC News at the time and also now lives in California. This person allegedly delivered his film to the AP office as a “reporter,” a non-staff member who provides material to a news organization.

Behind the film is husband and wife team Gary Knight, founder of VII Foundation, and producer Fiona Turner. On his website, Knight described “The Stringer” as “a story that many in our profession did not want to tell, and some of whom continue to go to great lengths to make sure it is not told.”

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“The film addresses questions of authorship, racial injustice, and journalistic ethics while highlighting the essential but often unrecognized contributions of independent local journalists who provide the information we need to understand how events around the world impact us all,” Knight wrote.

Knight did not return a message seeking comment from The Associated Press on Thursday. A representative from Sundance also did not return a letter about a cease and desist letter from Ut’s attorney, James Hornstein, who is trying to stop the film from airing. Hornstein did not make Ute available for an interview, saying he expects a lawsuit to be filed in the future.

Knight and Turner met with the AP in London last June about the allegations. According to the AP, the filmmakers asked the news organization to sign a non-disclosure agreement before submitting their evidence. The AP declined.

That, along with the passage of time, hampered the AP’s investigation. Horst Vass, head of the AP’s photo department, died in Saigon in 1972, and Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed Ott. Many Saigon bureau records were lost when the communists took over the city, including any dealings with the “correspondent.” The negatives used at that time are kept in the AP corporate archives in New York, but they provide no insight into the investigation.

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However, the AP decided to publish its findings before reviewing “The Stringer” and the details of its claim. “The Associated Press is prepared to review any evidence and take any remedial action that may be necessary if its thesis is proven correct,” the news organization said.

Some who were there are sure what happened

The AP said it spoke to seven survivors who were in Trang Bang or the AP’s Saigon office that day, and they all confirmed that they had no reason to doubt their own conclusions that Ot took the photo.

One of them was Fox Butterfield, a famous New York Times reporter, who also said that Turner contacted him for the documentary. “I told them about my memory and they didn’t like it, but they went ahead anyway,” Butterfield told the AP.

Another photographer was David Burnett, who said he saw Ott and Alexander Shimkin, a freelance photographer who works primarily for Newsweek magazine, taking pictures as Kim Phuc and other children emerged from the smoke after the attack. According to the investigation, Shimkin was killed in Vietnam a month later.

The main source for the story in “The Stringer” was Carl Robinson, then an AP photo editor in Saigon, whose ruling not to use the photo was initially overturned. The AP reached out to Robinson as part of its investigation, but he said he signed a nondisclosure agreement with Knight and the VII Foundation. Knight went on to say that Robinson would only speak off the record, which the AP concluded would have prevented the news organization from setting the record straight.

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Robinson did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Thursday.

While working that day in Saigon, Robinson concluded that Ott’s photo could not be used because it might violate standards prohibiting nudity. But Fez overruled him, and senior AP editors in New York decided to show the photo for what it conveyed about the war.

The AP questioned Robinson’s long silence in contradiction to Ott’s photo, and showed a photo from its archives of Robinson with champagne toasting Ott’s Pulitzer Prize. In a 2005 interview with company archives, Robinson said he believed the AP “created a monster” when it distributed the photo because so much of the world’s sympathy was focused on one victim, rather than the victims of war more broadly.

Former AP reporter Peter Arnett, who believes Ott made the photo, said Robinson wrote to him after Vass’s death in 2012 to make the claim that Ott did not take the photo; He said he didn’t want to do it while Fez was still alive. According to an AP investigation, Arnett said Robinson told him that Ott “went all Hollywood” and he didn’t like it.

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Honstein described Robinson, who was fired by the AP in 1978, as “a man with a 50-year vendetta against the AP.” He also questioned the long silence of the man supposedly identified in the documentary as the person who actually took the photo.

The lawyer also presented a statement from Kim Phuc, who said that although she did not remember that day, her uncle repeatedly told her that Ott had taken the photo and that she had no reason to doubt him. Ott also took her to the nearest hospital after the photo was taken, she wrote.

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David Bauder writes about media for the Associated Press. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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