Who really took the Vietnam War’s most iconic photo?

Photographs don’t come much more influential than ‘Napalm Girl’, the 1972 image that supposedly hastened the end of the Vietnam War. But now its provenance has been sensationally disputed.

Terrified children, including nine-year-old Kim Phuc, centre, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. AP

Jada Yuan

Jan 31, 2025 – 5.00am

Email LinkedIn Twitter Facebook

Subscribe to gift this article

Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.

Subscribe now

Already a subscriber?

Ten days before the premiere of the documentary The Stringer at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, the Associated Press published an extraordinary 23-page report of a six-month investigation rebutting the movie’s premise, without having seen a second of footage.

The Stringer questions whether the world-renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a naked nine-year-old girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War was attributed to the correct photographer. It’s also the only film to arrive at this year’s Sundance under a cloud of controversy, with a global news organisation fighting its stunning claims and a lawyer for the image’s credited photographer seeking to block its screening and threatening a defamation suit.

Washington Post