A independent artist from Vietnam has claimed to have taken one of the most famous and powerful images of the 20th century after a half-century of silence, claiming that the picture of a naked girl fleeing a napalm strike in South Vietnam has long been attributed to a staff photographer from the Associated Press.
On the day of the film’s premiere Saturday evening at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Nguyen Thanh Nghe claimed author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “napalm girl” photo in the new video” The Stringer.”
AP conducted its own research and said it has no reason to conclude that anyone other than the long-credited artist, Nick Ut, made the image. The artists are now being asked by AP to renounce the non-disclosure contracts they placed on their subjects in order for the business to conduct its full investigation. ” AP stands ready to examine any and all information and new information about this photo”, Lauren Easton, an AP director, said Sunday.
Nghe joined artists for a post-screening Q&, A where he said,” I took the photo”. The market cheered. He did not explain why he had to wait so long to make the state. On June 8, 1972, Nguyen claims to have captured Kim Phuc’s classic image. Nghe claimed that he was a vehicle for an NBC media team in Trang Bang that day and that he had captured the picture of Phuc running down the street, crying and dressed with arms extended. He claimed he sold the image to AP for$ 20, which his wife after destroyed.
” I’m not a journalist by any stretch of the imagination”, he said. ” I had a good pessimism going against a 53-year-old reality. However, I believed it was my duty and privilege to be able to inspire the tale of people like Nghe as a writer and director.
Carl Robinson, the next Saigon-based AP picture director, who was initially overruled by Horst Faas, AP’s Saigon main of photos, who was the film’s primary source, was overruled in his decision to not use the image. Robinson claims that Faas told him to “make it workers” and to give credit to Ut for the photo in the movie. Faas and Yuichi” Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed the picture, are useless. Robinson, 81, was dismissed by AP in 1978.
On Saturday, when asked why he wanted to come forward with the claims then, Robinson told the Sundance market,” I didn’t want to die before this story came out. I wanted to find ( Nghe ) and say sorry”.
The show’s sensor took over two decades. Journalists contacted the French forensics team INDEX to find out how likely it was that Ut had been able to take the picture. The group came to the conclusion that Ut’s ability to accomplish it was very unlikely.
Ut’s prosecutor has responded to the film, saying:” In due course, we may continue to right this wrong in a court where Ut’s standing may get vindicated”.
