Veteran documentary photographer and Leica user, Nick Ut, has strongly denied allegations that somebody else took the harrowing Vietnam war picture that won him a Pulitzer Prize.
The allegations concern the famous ‘Napalm Girl’ picture, which shows burnt children fleeing a 1972 napalm attack, and appear in a new movie called The Stringer. It recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the US.
Carl Robinson, a former photo editor at the Associated Press (AP) Saigon bureau, claims that the image was in fact taken by Thanh Nghe, a driver for the NBC news network who was also a freelance photographer (‘stringer.’) The chief photographer of the AP bureau, Horst Faas, then allegedly ordered Robinson to ‘make it Nick Ut,’ and the rest is history.
AP has vehemently denied the allegations, which the makers of The Stringer claim are borne out by other witnesses of the napalm attack. Indeed, AP conducted its own investigation, and is standing by Nick Ut, accusing Carl Robinson of being a disgruntled former employee who’s failed to explain why he’s waited so long to come forward (the accusations didn’t even appear in his 2019 Vietnam memoir). The same goes for Thanh Nge.
In another twist, the film makers claim to have additional evidence but will only release if it the AP signs a non-disclosure agreement, which it refuses to do.
Nick Ut responds – and is going legal
While the controversy rumbles on, Nick Ut has now released his own statement on his Facebook page. ‘More than 50 years later, I cannot understand why Mr. Carl Robinson, a fellow employee of the AP in Saigon at the time, would make up a story and claim I did not take that iconic photo, The Terror or War aka Napalm Girl,’ he says.
‘Why would Mr. Robinson not come forward in the many years before this? Mr. Robinson stood next to me and celebrated the Pulitzer Prize I won on the day it was announced. Mr. Robinson has had ample time to come forward before the key witnesses and those he is accusing of lying passes away… No one else ever came forward claiming that my image was not mine, no one ever confronted me about my photo and this is also the first time I heard the story that it was a stringer’s film’
In another development, a GoFundMe page has been launched by another Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, David Kennerly, to raise funds for Nick Ut’s defamation lawsuit against the makers of The Stringer.
A failsafe system
Ut goes on to explain how the images were processed and labelled by AP at the time. ‘All film was labeled and marked with each person’s name at the office before developing and matched by the label to the envelopes with the photographers names. Our system at the AP Saigon was fail-proof when it came to which negatives belonged to who.’
He also thanks some big name, Vietnam war-era journalists who were present on the day of the napalm attack and are standing by him, including documentary photographer David Burnett and the TV reporter (and fellow Pulitzer Prize winner) Peter Arnett.
‘I am extremely sad for the bureau chief and boss Horst Faas, rest in peace, and all of the AP staff in Saigon’ he adds. ‘This accusation by Mr. Robinson in my opinion is a slap in the face of everyone who dedicated their entire lives, careers to creating authentic, real and true images in very difficult situations like the Vietnam War.’
We will bring you more developments as they unfold.
