World Press Photo suspends the attribution of “Napalm Girl”
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In May 2025, World Press Photo suspended the attribution to Nick Út of The Terror of War – the 1972 photograph known worldwide as “Napalm Girl”. The organisation relied on Index’s visual analysis, which it had checked by a second expert.
On 16 May 2025, World Press Photo announced the suspension of the attribution of the photograph The Terror of War – known around the world as “Napalm Girl”. With this decision, the institution withdrew the credit from Nick Út (Huỳnh Công Út), of the Associated Press, to whom the photograph had been attributed since its publication. Taken on 8 June 1972 during the Vietnam War, the image was awarded the World Press Photo of the Year and the Pulitzer Prize the following year.
The decision followed the doubts raised by the documentary The Stringer (VII Foundation), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025 and attributes the picture to another photographer, the Vietnamese freelancer Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. World Press Photo relied in particular on the independent visual analysis conducted by Index, which studied the archive images, reconstructed the positions of the photographers present at the scene, and examined the cameras they used. World Press Photo commissioned a second review from the independent analyst Christiaan Triebert (New York Times Visual Investigations, formerly of Bellingcat), who confirmed Index’s findings.
Following this review, World Press Photo concluded that there was too much doubt to maintain the existing attribution, but not enough evidence to formally name another author. The attribution therefore remains suspended unless new evidence emerges to confirm or disprove the original authorship.