Vietnamese-American photographer & photojournalist (born 1951)
In thisVietnamese name, thesurname is Huỳnh, but is often simplified toHuynh in English-language text. In accordance with Vietnamese custom, this person should be referred to by thegiven name,Ut (Út).
Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally asNick Ut (born March 29, 1951),[2] is a Vietnamese-American photographer who worked for theAssociated Press in Los Angeles.[3] He won both the 1973Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973World Press Photo of the Year for the 1972 photographThe Terror of War, depicting children running away from anapalm bombing attack during theVietnam War.[4] Since the release of the documentaryThe Stringer in 2025, the authorship of the photograph has been disputed; the documentary identified Nguyễn Thành Nghệ as the author, AP stood with the attribution to Ut, andWorld Press Photo suspended the authorship attribution until more evidence is available.[5] Ut retired in 2017.[6] Examples of his work may be found in the collection of theNational Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.[7]
Ut began to take photographs for the Associated Press when he was 15,[8][9] just after his older brotherHuynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam.[10] His closest friend in the Saigon bureau,Henri Huet, also died in 1971 after volunteering to take the weary Ut's place on an assignment.[11]
After thefall of Saigon in 1975, Ut himself was wounded three different times in the war in his knee, arm, and stomach. He moved toTokyo and arrived inLos Angeles two years later.[12]
The Terror of War was long credited to Nick Ut, but the authorship of the photograph is now disputed
The Terror of War, also colloquially calledNapalm Girl,[13][14] is a photograph that was long-credited to Ut but possibly taken by Nguyen Thanh Nghe or Huynh Cong Phuc, according to aWorld Press investigation. It features a naked 9-year-old girl,Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hitTrảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops on June 8, 1972.[15] It became one of the most famous images of theVietnam War and an indictment of the effects of war on innocent victims in general.[16]
The publication of the photograph was delayed due to the AP bureau's debate about transmitting a naked girl's photograph over the wire.[17]
Before delivering his film with photographs, Ut set his camera aside to rush 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life. He said: "I cried when I saw her running... If I don’t help her, if something happened and she died, I think I’d kill myself after that".[22]
... an editor at the AP rejected the photo of Kim Phuc running down the road without clothing because it showed frontal nudity. Pictures of nudes of all ages and sexes, and especially frontal views were an absolute no-no at the Associated Press in 1972 ...Horst argued bytelex with the New York head-office that an exception must be made, with the compromise that no close-up of the girl Kim Phuc alone would be transmitted. The New York photo editor,Hal Buell, agreed that the news value of the photograph overrode any reservations about nudity.[23]
Audiotapes of then-presidentRichard Nixon in conversation with his chief of staff,H. R. Haldeman, show that Nixon doubted the veracity of the photograph, musing whether it may have been "fixed".[25]
In September 2016,[26] a Norway newspaper published an open letter toMark Zuckerberg after censorship was imposed on this photograph placed on the newspaper's Facebook page.[27][28] Half of the ministers in the Norwegian government shared the photograph on their Facebook pages, among them prime ministerErna Solberg from the Conservative Party. Several of the Facebook posts, including the Prime Minister's post, were deleted by Facebook,[29][30] but later that day, Facebook reinstated the picture and said "the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal".[31][32]
A 2025 documentary,The Stringer investigates the authorship of the photo and claims that it was not taken by Ut but by a Vietnamese photographer named Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. Ut andAssociated Press both deny the claim.[33] After a year-long investigation into the authorship of the "Napalm Girl" photo, the Associated Press concluded there was no convincing evidence who the photographer is.[34][35] World Press carried out its own investigation into the photographer and presented their findings on 10 May in Amsterdam. They concluded based on an analysis of the location, distance and the camera used, that it is more likely that the photo was taken by Nguyen Thanh Nghe or Huynh Cong Phuc, as they were in a better position than Ut. Given the remaining uncertainty, World Press announced that it would suspend the attribution of authorship to the photo going forwards.[36] AP did not change the credit to Ut, citing the absence of conclusive evidence.[16]
His photos of a cryingParis Hilton in the back seat of aLos Angeles County Sheriff's cruiser on June 8, 2007, were published worldwide. However, Ut was photographing Hilton alongside photographerKarl Larsen. Two photographs emerged, the more famous of which showing Hilton was credited to Ut, despite being Larsen's photo.[37]
After working for theAssociated Press for 51 years, Ut retired in 2017.[38] The photography community in Los Angeles held a retirement party to celebrate Ut's career and exhibit his work (including that iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo) atThe Perfect Exposure Gallery inLos Angeles.[39][40]
Ut was the 2014Lucie Awards honoree for Achievement in Photojournalism.Kerala Media Academy inIndia presented him with the World Press Photographer Prize in 2019.
In 2021, Nick Ut was awarded theNational Medal of Arts for his work during the Vietnam War.[45] On the eve of receiving the award, Ut published an essay inNewsweek explaining why he decided to accept the medal from PresidentDonald Trump despite political concerns surroundingthe January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.[46][47] The next day, while out to dinner with a friend, Nick Ut was attacked by a stranger in downtownWashington, DC. He fell to the ground, hit the metal fence surrounding the tree, and hurt his ribs, back, and leg. It is unclear whether this attack was for political reasons or just coincidental.[44] After the incident, Ut received many calls asking about his health, including fromKim Phuc.[48]
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