World Press Photo, the foundation that promotes the main awards in photojournalism worldwide, has suspended the attribution of the image The Terror of War (1972), the iconic photograph taken in the Vietnam War that until now had Nick Út as the author and received its award and the Pulitzer in 1973.
The announcement follows the premiere at the Sundance Festival of The Stringer, a documentary produced by another foundation of photojournalists, The VII Foundation. The film argues that Út was not in a position to take the image and that his colleague Nguyn Thành Ngh was the author, given the cameras they were using and their location in the scene of the photograph. Following the movie, World Press Photo opened an investigation that has added the name of another photographer, Hunh Công Phúc, as a possible author of the image.
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The Terror of War shows five children and four soldiers on a road, moving away from a bombing where the South Vietnamese Army used napalm. One of the children runs naked and cries. The image had an immediate impact on the world as an emblem of the horror of the Vietnam War. From the beginning, Hunh Công Út, nicknamed Nick, a Vietnamese photographer employed by the Associated Press (AP), appeared as its author. Associated Press has also opened an internal investigation into the case but has not found sufficient evidence to withdraw the authorship from Nick Út.
The Terror of War was taken on June 8, 1972, when a dozen journalists arrived in Trng Bàng, northwest of Saigon, to cover a battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the South Vietnamese forces (ARVN). Three photographers, several reporters, and a television crew set up at a military checkpoint on a road, where civilians and soldiers from the ARVN 25th Division had gathered. Together, they witnessed a South Vietnamese Air Force bomber mistakenly dropping napalm on their own forces and on civilians trying to flee the combat. Among the fleeing children was Phan Th Kim Phúc, a nine-year-old, the naked child immortalized in the center of the image.
The television crew's footage is one of the pieces of evidence that led to the withdrawal of Út's authorship, as in one of the shots, the photographer is seen further from the scene than his colleagues. The AP report argues that it is not implausible that Út approached Phan Th Kim Phúc seconds later. Another inconsistency in the known version relates to technology: Út used Leica and Nikon cameras, and the awarded image was taken with a Pentax lens, according to World Press Photo. Associated Press maintains that this technological attribution is a hypothesis and not confirmed.
The statement from World Press Photo also indicates that The Terror of War will not lose its place in its list of awards. The suspension only affects its authorship. Nick Út is still alive, has become a U.S. citizen, lives in Los Angeles, and maintains contact with Phan Th Kim Phúc, who is now Canadian and resides in Toronto.