The American news agency Associated Press announced Tuesday that it would continue to credit one of its photographers for the famous image of the “little girl in napalm” during the Vietnam War, even if “important questions” persist after the release of an accusing documentary.
The black and white photo of this seriously burned Vietnamese little Vietnamese girl on a road after a napalm bombing in Trang Bang, in the south of the country in 1972, had helped to change the global perception of this war and remains more than 50 years later a symbol of its horrors.
AP American-Vietnamese photographer, Huynh Cong Ut, better known as Nick Ut, had received a Pulitzer prize and a World Press Photo Prize for this emblematic image. “The little girl in napalm”, Kim Phuc Phan Thi, who became Canadian, continued to testify an adult.
But in January, a documentary projected at the American Sundance Festival, “The Strunger”, had assigned the photo to a Vietnamese freelance journalist, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, interviewed in the film.
After a survey of almost a year, the press agency published on Tuesday a 97 -page report and concludes that “there is no final evidence, according to (its) standards, to modify the credit of this 53 -year -old photo”.
– “Possible” –
“The in -depth visual analysis of AP, interviews with the witnesses and the examination of all the photos available on June 8, 1972 show that it is possible that should have taken this photo. None of these elements prove that someone else did,” said a press release from the news agency.
-But “our investigation raises important questions, to which we may never be able to answer” because “fifty years have passed, many people involved are dead and technology has its limits,” adds AP.
The agency notes, for example, that it is “likely” according to its investigation that the photo was taken with a Pentax apparatus, while Nick Ut had affirmed in several interviews that he was working that day with two Leica and two Nikon devices.
“History wants to take the photo with a Leica apparatus. AP’s investigation has shown that it was very unlikely. But UT was also used to using other devices, including pentax inherited from his deceased brother,” wrote AP in his report.
In the documentary “The Strunger”, Carl Robinson, in the era publisher photo in Saigon for AP, assures having lied and modified the legend of the image on the orders of its editor -in -chief, Horst Faas.
“Nick Ut accompanied me on the field. But it was not he who took this photo … It’s me.”, Says Nguyen Thanh Nghe in the film.
“There is no evidence that Nguyen took the photo,” wrote the American agency in his report, while saying “stay open to the possibility that UT did not take this photo”.
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