Napalm Girl : 3D reconstruction reveals the truth about the photograph

In the documentary The Stringer, released today on Netflix, Index examines one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century. Since 1972, “Napalm Girl” has been attributed to photographer Nick Ut. Our digital reconstruction of the circumstances of its capture shows that this attribution is incorrect.

This Friday, November 28, the documentary The Stringer is being released on Netflix. Directed by Bao Nguyen and produced by the VII Foundation, the film investigates the attribution of one of the most iconic photographs in the history of photojournalism: The Terror of War, also known as “Napalm Girl.” Taken on June 8, 1972 during the Vietnam War, the image shows a group of children —including a 9-year-old girl (Kim Phuc), naked and severely burned— fleeing a napalm attack carried by South Vietnamese air force upon the Vietnamese village of Trảng Bàng. Published by the American news agency Associated Press (AP), the photograph appeared on the front page of dozens of newspapers around the world the very next day and has since been recognized as an emblematic image of its time.

Since its publication, Napalm Girl has always been credited to Nick Ut, a Vietnamese-American AP photographer. Nick Ut’s authorship is now challenged by the investigation presented in The Stringer: in reality, the photograph may have been taken by Nguyen Thành Nghê, a local stringer who allegedly sold his film roll to the AP bureau in Saigon for $20.

In early 2024, the team behind The Stringer commissioned Index to carry out an independent analysis to determine whether Nick Ut could in fact have taken the photo. Drawing on dozens of images shot that day by the various photographers present, as well as film footage and historical satellite imagery of the site, Index created a digital reconstruction within a 3D model of the moments leading up to and following the instant the photograph was taken.

Our analysis, included in the final part of the documentary as a 3D sequence commented by our team, shows that it is highly unlikely that Nick Ut could have taken the Napalm Girl photograph.

Premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2025, The Stringer—and our analysis in particular—sparked a major controversy in the world of photojournalism.

On May 6, 2025, Associated Press published an extensive review of “the claims around ‘The Terror of War’ photograph,” focusing especially on our analysis. In this report, AP revealed new information that Index incorporated into the final version of the film released today, further strengthening our argument. Moreover, the analysis of the photograph’s negative presented in AP’s report concludes that “it is likely the famous photo was taken with a Pentax camera,” contradicting Nick Ut’s version, who has always insisted he shot the image with a Leica M2. Nonetheless, AP ends its report by stating that “AP’s standards say ‘a challenged credit would be removed only if definitive evidence … showed that the person who claimed to have taken the photo did not.’ All available evidence analyzed by AP does not clear that bar. Thus, the photo will remain attributed to Ut.”

In a report published on June 26, 2025, World Press Photo (WPP) released its own investigation into the photograph’s attribution 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,” as “the level of doubt is too significant to maintain the existing attribution.”

In September 2025, photographer Tristan da Cunha published an additional study, focusing particularly on the question of the camera that may have been used to take the original image. According to da Cunha, “it is untenable to continue claiming that Nick Ut is the author of the ‘Napalm Girl’ photo.”

As of today, the documentary is available on Netflix worldwide.

Team