Nick Ut
| Nick Ut | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Huỳnh Công Út March 29, 1951 Long An, Vietnam |
| Residence | Los Angeles |
| Other names | Nick Ut |
| Citizenship | American |
| Occupation | Photojournalism |
| Notable credit(s) | Pulitzer Prize-winner |
| Children | 2 |
Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951), is a photographer for the Associated Press (AP) who works out of Los Angeles. He won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for "The Terror of War", depicting children in flight from a napalm bombing. In particular, his best-known photo features a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm attack on North Vietnamese troops at the Trảng Bàng village during the Vietnam War. 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.
Born in Long An, Vietnam, 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:
...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 by telex 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.
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Wikipedia