Who shot the iconic Vietnam War 'Napalm Girl' photo? Film claims wrong photographer got the credit

One of the most powerful photographs from the Vietnam War shows a young South Vietnamese girl running down a street, naked and crying.

Behind her, South Vietnamese planes had just pummeled her village with napalm bombs. It was a case of friendly fire.

Some of the girl's clothes had been burned off. She had torn off the rest, as the bombs' chemicals had scorched her skin.

The impact of the so-called "Napalm Girl" photo from 1972 still resonates today, said photojournalist Gary Knight.

“The most important photographs of war, I believe, are photographs that show the circumstances and conditions under which civilians endure war," Knight said. "And it's a horrific, horrific photograph.”

It was published around the world, and it helped galvanize the movement to end the Vietnam War.

It also propelled a young Vietnamese photographer, Nick Ut, into the global spotlight. Ut, then a staff photojournalist for The Associated Press, won a Pulitzer Prize for the picture. He was invited to meet the Pope and the Queen of England.

“As a Vietnamese-American, that photo is ingrained in our history," said filmmaker Bao Nguyen, who's the son of Vietnamese immigrants. "Knowing that that photograph changed the direction of the war and knowing, believing that a Vietnamese person had won the Pulitzer Prize … meant a lot to our community."

But Knight, who until recently lived in Newburyport, and Nguyen claim the wrong man got the credit for taking the historic photo. They say it was taken by a freelance photographer, also known as a "stringer," who never got his due.

They're the executive producer and the director of a new documentary called “The Stringer," showing in Cambridge Saturday at the GlobeDocs Film Festival. The film will appear on Netflix starting Nov. 28.

Its producers hired forensic investigators to uncover whether Ut or stringer Nguyen Thanh Nghe took the iconic shot. The team recreated the scene using old satellite and still images, news film and 3D models. Ultimately, their investigation concluded Ut was too far down the street to have taken the photo — but that Nghe was in the right spot.

The AP launched its own investigation around the photograph, which is officially named “The Terror of War.” Its 97-page report, released in May, states:

AP has concluded that it is possible Nick Ut took the photo. However, that cannot be proven definitively due to the passage of time, the death of many of the key players involved and the limitations of technology. New findings uncovered during this investigation do raise unanswered questions and AP remains open to the possibility that Ut did not take this photo.

However, AP said, in the absence of definitive proof that Ut did not take the photo, it will continue to credit him for the image.

Kim Phuc, the girl in the photo, survived the napalm attack. Now 62 years old, Phuc told AP she cannot remember those moments, but that she believes Ut took the photo, as eyewitnesses have told her.

Ut did not grant an interview to the journalists who made the film.

WBUR'S All Things Considered host Lisa Mullins spoke with documentary makers Knight and Nguyen.

On the whistleblower, Carl Robinson, a former photo editor for The Associated Press in Saigon, who claims the chief photographer for the AP in the region, Horst Faas, ordered him to credit Nick Ut for the photo when writing its caption.

Gary Knight: "Carl wrote to me just before Christmas in 2022. And he had spoken amongst a very small group of journalists who covered the Vietnam War about his story for a number of years. But he had never had the courage to go public with it. He was approaching his 80s, and he wrote to me, and he said, ‘You know, I want to get this off my chest, and I want to talk, and I want you to help me tell my story.' "

On the decision to credit Nick Ut for the photo:

Knight: "Well, only Horst [Faas, who died in 2012] can truly answer that question  [about the photo caption]. But Carl and I spoke about that at some length in the film, and what we believe is that Nick Ut's brother had been killed on assignment for Horst Faas a few years previously. He was a photographer. ... And Horst felt enormous guilt about that. And also, Horst had no loyalty to the stringer, who had never sold photographs to AP before. And when a photograph goes out onto the wire with the letters STF, meaning staff,  it shows that The Associated Press in this case, the wire service, had enterprised the photographs themselves using a staff photographer.  If it goes out with STR, meaning stringer, it basically means that the photograph walked through the door and it wasn't enterprised by, in this case, AP."

On the freelance photographer they believe took the photo, based on the investigation behind the documentary:

Bao Nguyen: "Nguyen Thanh Nghe, who was a stringer at that time, was on that road the day that that famous photo was taken. He always claimed since the day that the photo was taken that he was the one who took that photograph.

"And for over 50 years now, he hasn't had a chance to tell his story, his memory, his experience of that day. And for me, along with Gary and our team of journalists, [we] believe that everyone's memory, everyone's experience has equal value. And it was important for us to explore the question of who possibly took the photograph, given that this had been sort of written into record for, again, 50-plus years. And, you know, he's never asked for anything more other than to tell his story."

On tracking down Nghe, who was living in California with his family but was in Vietnam when the documentary team found him:

Knight: "It was very emotional to meet him for the first time. Our first contact with him was made by a Vietnamese colleague.  ... So she went down to visit him, showed him the photographs, and talked to him about his experience that day. And he identified himself as the author of that photograph. He [later] had a stroke, and the rest of the team flew out from the States and from Europe to meet him. And when we met him in hospital, he was in pretty bad shape. And it was very, very emotional, and for a while we, we weren't sure if he'd make it through. But he did. And he's frail."

On why it was important to try to confirm who took the photo all these years later:

Knight: "Well, truth in journalism is paramount, right? And you know, as somebody said immediately after the film was first shown at Sundance [Film Festival], truth has no expiration date. And this photograph is one of the most important photographs or acts of journalism made of any war ... and the idea that the authorship could be seriously challenged is troubling. And if that question is asked, it's imperative that as journalists, we go and answer that question, or investigate the accusation and do our best to answer the question."

On what it was like to be with Nghe and his family, who, like others in the film, described turmoil they experienced over Nghe not being credited for the famous photo:

Nguyen: "I could just sense this, you know, enormous amount of gratitude that they had [for our] listening to their story. … And I think people may question — and I actually questioned this in the beginning — why did it take so long for them to tell this story? And I realized, like, it was something that they had to carry with them because they didn't feel like they had the agency or the recourse to be able to talk to AP, to talk to people outside that would listen, that would have the power to kind of tell their story."