Nick Ut

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951) is a Vietnamese American photographer for the Associated Press (AP) who works out of Los Angeles.  He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for "The Terror of War", depicting children in flight from a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War.  His best-known photo, it features a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm strike  that mistakenly hit Trảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops.  On the 40th anniversary of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo in September 2012, Ut became the third person  inducted by the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism.  On March 29, 2017, he retired from AP. 

Biography

Born in Long An, Vietnam (then part of the French Indochina), Ut began to take photographs for the Associated Press when he was 16, just after his older brother Huynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam.  Ut himself was wounded three times in the war in his knee, arm, and stomach.   Ut has since worked for the Associated Press in Tokyo, South Korea, and Hanoi and still maintains contact with Kim Phuc, who now resides in Canada. 

Before delivering his film with the Kim Phúc photo, he took her to the hospital.  The publication of the photo was delayed due to the AP bureau's debate about transmitting a naked girl's photo over the wire:

In September, 2016, a Norway newspaper published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg after censorship was imposed on this photograph placed on the newspaper's Facebook page.  Half of the ministers in the Norwegian government shared the famous Nick Ut photo on their Facebook pages, among them prime minister Erna Solberg from the Conservative Party (Høyre).  Several of the Facebook posts including the Prime Minister's post were deleted by Facebook, but later that day Facebook decided to allow the photo. 

Nixon connection
Audiotapes of then-president Richard 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."  Following the release of this tape, Ut commented:

Family and later career
Ut is a United States citizen and is married with two children.  He lives in Los Angeles, and remains an AP photographer.  His photos of a crying Paris Hilton in the back seat of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's cruiser on June 8, 2007 were published worldwide; however, Ut was photographing Hilton alongside photographer Karl Larsen.  Two photographs emerged; the more famous photo of Hilton was credited to Ut despite being Larsen's photo. 

Awards 
 2018: World Press Photographer Prize, IPPFK, Kerala Media Academy, India.  The award consists of a citation and a purse of Rs.  1 lakh. 

References

External links 

 
 Nick Ut, Exactly 35 Years Later
 Nick Ut - Still a Photographer with the Associated Press Horst Faas and Marianne Fulton
 A return to Saigon - 4
 AP Career Retrospective for Nick Ut
 Hall of Fame Award Winners Leica Awards // World of Leica - Leica Camera AG archive

Category:1951 births
Category:Living people
Category:20th-century American photographers
Category:20th-century Vietnamese people
Category:21st-century American photographers
Category:Associated Press photographers
Category:People from Long An Province
Category:Photography in Vietnam
Category:Pulitzer Prize for Photography winners
Category:Vietnamese emigrants to the United States
Category:Vietnamese photographers
Category:War photographers