Who took the “Napalm Girl” photograph? Analysis and 3D reconstruction

This Friday, 28 November, the documentary The Stringer is released on Netflix. Directed by Bao Nguyen and produced by the VII Foundation, the film investigates the attribution of one of the most emblematic photographs in the history of photojournalism: The Terror of War, also known as Napalm Girl. Taken on 8 June 1972 during the Vietnam War, the image shows a group of children, including a nine-year-old girl (Kim Phuc), naked and severely burned, fleeing a napalm attack on the Vietnamese village of Trảng Bang, bombed by the South Vietnamese air force. Published by the American agency Associated Press (AP), the photograph appeared the very next day on the front pages of dozens of newspapers around the world, and has since achieved iconic status.

Since its publication, Napalm Girl has always been credited to Nick Ut, a Vietnamese-American photographer with AP. This account of events is now contradicted by the investigation presented in the documentary The Stringer: in reality, the photograph is said to have been taken by Nguyen Thành Nghe, a local freelance photographer – a “stringer” – who reportedly sold his film to the AP bureau in Saigon for 20 dollars.

In early 2024, the film’s team asked Index to carry out an independent expert analysis to verify whether Nick Ut could indeed have taken the photograph. Drawing on dozens of pictures taken that day by the various photographers present at the scene, as well as film footage and historical satellite imagery of the site, Index built a 3D model digitally reconstructing the sequence of events immediately before and after the moment the photograph in question was taken.

Index’s analysis, incorporated into the documentary as a 3D sequence narrated by its team, demonstrates that it is highly unlikely that Nick Ut could have taken the Napalm Girl photograph.

Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the United States in January 2025, The Stringer – and Index’s expert analysis in particular – sparked a major controversy in the world of photojournalism.

On 6 May 2025, Associated Press published a lengthy analysis of “the claims surrounding the photograph ‘The Terror of War’”, focusing in particular on the NGO’s analysis. In that report, AP disclosed new information that Index used in the final version of the film released today, and which strengthens its argument. Moreover, the analysis of the photograph’s negative presented in the AP report concludes that “it is likely the photo was taken with a Pentax camera”, which contradicts the account of Nick Ut, who has always maintained that he took the picture with a Leica M2. Nevertheless, the American news agency concludes its report by stating that “the definitive evidence required by AP’s standards to change the attribution” of the photograph “is lacking”.

In a report published on 26 June 2025, World Press Photo (WPP) released its own investigation into the attribution of the photograph and into the analysis produced by Index (The Terror of War won the World Press Photo of the Year Award in 1973). This report echoes and confirms Index’s conclusions; following its publication, WPP decided to “officially suspend the attribution of The Terror of War to Nick Ut”, because “the level of doubt is too significant” as to the identity of the photograph’s author.

In September 2025, the photographer Tristan da Cunha published a further study, focusing in particular on the question of the camera that may have been used to take the original picture. According to da Cunha, “it is untenable to continue asserting that Nick Ut is the author of the Napalm Girl photograph”.

From today, the documentary is available on Netflix worldwide.