World Press Photo has doubts about authorship Vietnamese ‘Napalm girl’ and scraps name author

The organization World Press Photo has Friday decided To the author’s name at the well -known press photo ‘The Terror of War’ from 1972 to omit. Recently a fuss arose because not the alleged author Nick Ut would have taken the photo at the time, but the unknown Vietnamese press photographer Nguyen Thanh Nghe.

About who the author is of ‘The Napalm girl’has been a discussion for some time. On her website, the director of World Press Photo writes, Joumana El Zein Khoury, that the « degree of doubt is too great to maintain the existing attribution ». At the same time, El Zein Khoury states that the evidence does not point to another author. That is why she says she does not grant the authorship again.

The photo is now accompanied by a caption that explains that there is doubt about the author, but that the historical value of the photo remains intact. « It is important that the photo itself remains undisputed and that the price for the photo remains. Only the authorship is assessed. » It also states that the identity of the author may never be obsolete.

The Stringer

The controversy arose after the documentary came out The Stringerin January. In that documentary it is claimed that ‘The Terror of War’ From the 9-year-old Kim Phuc in Trang Bang, South Vietnam, was not made by Nick Ut, but by Nguyen Thanh Nghe. The documentary states that both photographers were present during the attack, but that the unknown freelancer Nguyen Thanh Nghe made the iconic image, frontal from the front.

Nick Ut was in the service of the AP news agency at the time and won later for making ‘The Napalm girl’ The World Press Photo Prize and a Pulitzer. The documentary states that in 1972 at the AP office in Saigon, where the photos were developed and printed, the image of Nguyen Thanh Nghe was assessed as the strongest, but then intentionally attributed UT. AP news agency denies that after an internal investigation.

World Press Photo director El Zein Khoury endorses in her decision that it is « essential » to take questions about authenticity and authorship in photojournalism for fifty years later. In this era that, according to El Zein Khoury, « is determined by wrong information, polarization, media manipulation and the hollowing of the trust of the public », the image itself is not under discussion. The authorship is.

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