South Vietnam, 9 June 1972 | Nick Ut
The greatest political photograph of all.
By Ian K Smith Published 01 April 2010
Huynh Cong Ut, known professionally as Nick Ut, is a photographer who won a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1973 for his Associated Press photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, taken on 8 June 1972. Kim Phuc, as a young girl, runs away naked from the scene of a napalm attack by the South Vietnamese Air Force.
A film shot by the photojournalists Alan Downes of ITN and Le Phuc Dinh of NBC shows her, the skin falling off her back, and other children shredded by the incendiary. Nick Ut's picture is a harrowing and natural image of the innocent cost of war.
In this week's magazine, he discusses the photograph and his lasting friendship with his best-known subject, who today addresses him as "Old Man" or "Uncle". Now a Canadian citizen, Khim Phuc read an essay called "The Long Road to Forgiveness" on National Public Radio in 2008:
Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed.
Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope and forgiveness.
If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?
Next: South Vietnam, 11 June 1963 | Malcolm Browne
This image features in the 50 Greatest Political Photographs (part one) special double issue of the NS. You can order your copy here.
The judges were Jason Cowley, Jonathan Dimbleby, Stuart Franklin, Rebecca McClelland and Jon Snow.
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4 comments
OH my goodness, shame on Dave and Greg. I wish the two of them could me Kim Phuc so she could tell them how ignorant they sound. Propaganda? For what? The monks set themselves on fire to make a statement. Phuc was a 9 year-old innocent girl who continues to suffer from pain that neither of you could imagine. She bares the horrific scars throughout a good portion of her body, and that chimp you speak of helped save her life. Shame on you for trying to downplay KIm Phuc's horrific ordeal. Oh, and by the way, she is helping not only her people, but also many different people from all over the world. The Kim Phuc Foundation provides funds to support the work of international organizations that provide free medical assistance to children who are victims of war and terrorism. So don't make comments without researching the facts first guys. Thanks
realmente es impresionante todo lo que sale de una guerra, pero hago un tributo a todos esos niños que murieron y sufrieron la bestialidad de las personas responsables de tan hoarrible accion y que sirva de mucho opara deifundir en todo el mundo la realidad de las guerras
Further to the comments above the picture could have been taken by a trained chimp with a Nikon F and probably was! With an auto photomic head it would have been very easy to take. I would invite all ordinary unprejudiced viewers to look at the evidence of their own eyes! The horrific effects of napalm in the photo look like the work of a boiled kettle. Compare this with the "self immolation of the monk" or "the execution of the Vietcong soldier " and see more meaningful pictorial images. Look at the photo by all means, but interpret yourselves and do not let these ass-holes influence unduly as is their intention.
Absolute rubbish, we did not see the mutiliations and atrocities from the other side. This why the picture is mere propaganda. The judges were Jason Cowley, Jonathan Dimbleby, Stuart Franklin, Rebecca McClelland and Jon Snow, most of them all doing well, in the Media drenched, fashionable Swinging London at the time. It is a bit like the Mass Media Inspired, Mandela Syndrome, if he had been imprisoned by Africans he would have been just another body in the mass grave of Africa. Khim Phuc should have stayed to help her own people. Her words are the decayed sentimentality of Western Liberalism. Luc's own culture could have found ones equally as good.