The “Napalm Girl” photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children fleeing an errant aerial attack on their village, taken 50 years ago this month, has rightly been called “a picture that doesn’t rest.”
It is one of those exceptional visual artifacts that draws attention and even controversy years after it was made.
In May 2022, for example, Nick Ut, the photographer who captured the image, and the photo’s central figure, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, made news at the Vatican as they presented a poster-size reproduction of the prize-winning image to Pope Francis, who has emphasized the evils of warfare.
In 2016, Facebook stirred controversy by deleting “Napalm Girl” from a commentary posted at the network because the photograph shows the then-9-year-old Kim Phuc entirely naked. She had torn away her burning clothes as she and other terrified children ran from their village, Trang Bang, on June 8, 1972. Facebook retracted the decision amid an international uproar about the social network’s free speech policies.
