After a half-century of silence, freelancer claims he took the 'napalm girl'

After a half-century of public silence, a freelance photographer from Vietnam has asserted he took one of the most renowned and impactful photos of the 20th century – the image of a naked girl fleeing a napalm attack in South Vietnam that has long been credited to a staff photographer from Associated Press.
Nguyen Thanh Nghe claimed authorship of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “napalm girl” photograph in the new documentary ‘The Stringer’ on the sidelines of its premiere Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
AP conducted its own investigation and said it has no reason to conclude that anyone other than the long-credited photographer, Nick Ut, made the picture. Now, AP is calling on the filmmakers to lift the non-disclosure agreements they placed on their subjects to allow the company to investigate more fully. “AP stands ready to review any and all evidence and new information about this photo,” Lauren Easton, an AP spokesperson, said Sunday.
Nghe joined filmmakers for a post-screening Q&A where he said, “I took the photo.” The audience cheered. He did not say why he waited so long to make the claim. Nguyen says he took the iconic photo of Kim Phuc on June 8, 1972. Nghe said he went to the town of Trang Bang that day as a driver for an NBC news crew and captured the image of Phuc running down the street, crying and naked with arms outstretched. He said he sold his image to AP for $20, and they gave him a print of the photo that his wife later destroyed.
“I’m not a journalist by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “I had a healthy scepticism going against a 53-year-old truth. But as a storyteller and filmmaker, I thought it was my responsibility and privilege to be able to uplift the story of individuals like Nghe.”
A primary source in the film is Carl Robinson, then an AP photo editor in Saigon, who was overruled in his judgment not to use the picture by Horst Faas, AP’s Saigon chief of photos. Robinson says in the film Faas instructed him to “make it staff” and credit Ut for the photo. Faas and Yuichi “Jackson” Ishizaki, who developed the film, are dead. Robinson, 81, was dismissed by AP in 1978.
On Saturday, when asked why he wanted to come forward with the allegations now, Robinson told the Sundance audience, “I didn’t want to die before this story came out. I wanted to find (Nghe) and say sorry.”
The film’s probe took over two years. Journalists enlisted French forensics team INDEX to help determine the likelihood of whether Ut had been in a position to take the photo. The team concluded it was highly unlikely Ut could have done it.
Ut’s attorney has responded to the documentary, saying: “In due course, we will proceed to right this wrong in a courtroom where Ut’s reputation will be vindicated.”