The world-famous Associated Press photo of Kim Phuc — “The Terror of War,” known popularly as “Napalm Girl” — was taken on June 8, 1972, and credited to Nick Ut, a young Vietnamese AP staffer working in the Saigon bureau. The image is among the most recognised and celebrated works of photojournalism of the 20th Century.
For the past six months, aware that a film challenging this historical record was in production, the AP has conducted its own painstaking research, which supports the historical account that Ut was the photographer. In the absence of new, convincing evidence to the contrary, the AP has no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo. The famous image is formally titled “The Terror of War.”
The film called “The Stringer” will run for the first time at the Sundance Film Festival this week. ‘A two-year investigation uncovers a scandal behind the making of one of the most-recognized photographs of the 20th century. Five decades of secrets are unraveled in the search for justice for a man known only as “the stringer.”’
From the AP report: … AP scrutinized negatives in its possession and sought out every image available to it from other photographers and film crews at the scene that day. It has compiled a visual timeline of the day’s events in Trang Bang, including a review of smoke patterns over the village, and detailed the known procedures for handling rolls of film3 4 brought into the AP darkroom. It has gone through oral histories in the AP archives touching on the “Napalm Girl” photo as well as written accounts from others involved. … Read the full AP report into the image here.