#napalmgirl

[akaashmaharaj]

Meeting Phan Thị Kim Phúc

I enjoyed meeting Phan Thị Kim Phúc and her husband Bui Huy Toan. Kim is a UNESCO Ambassador, but is undoubtedly best known from the photograph "Napalm Girl", one of the most haunting and emblematic images of the Vietnam war. The couple now live in Toronto.

See the original post at https://maharaj.ca/2Ka8uQr

[jannymanny]

Didn’t know that he had a talk happening today at the Art Science Museum and hence missed the session. Lucky me bumped into him in the lift. So honoured to meet Nick Ut in person. Thank you Ray for his signed card and this photo. When in a lifetime can you meet a legendary photojournalist again? #pulitzerprize #NickUt #napalmgirl (at ArtScience Museum)

[signaltraffic]

Dinh Q Lê, The Scroll of Phan Thi Kim Phuc (2013), C-print in gold lacquer box, 5000 x 127 cm.  

[”Images” I Like]

[yesterdaygod-blog]

Banksy's production.

[icouldbeyoursuperhero]

'The Napalm Girl' On June 8, 1972, nine year old Phan Thi Kim Phuc runs naked from the ruins of her home town after being severely burned from an attack on her village in South Vietnam during the Vietnam war. The Napalm left 30% of her body with 3rd degree burns, and won Nick Ut, the photographer, the Pulitzer prize. It represents the millions of innocents that have to suffer for the wars they never started.

[valeriesylam-blog]

A photograph ushers forgiveness

You've probably seen this photo, and possibly read about the recent 40th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize image. The woman in front of the lens is Kim Phuc Phan Thi, fleeing a napalm strike during the Vietnam War, photographed by Nick Ut.

I read in another paper today that she thanked journalists, nurses and doctors for coming to her aid, which allowed her to survive and live today in Toronto. 

She said that she thought she would "die of hatred" after going through the bombing, and having two cousins killed in the very fire she escaped. "In order to be really free, I had to learn to forgive," she said to the Canadian Press. "A moment captured on film turned one child's atrocity into a story of hope and survival." 

I've been reading Calvin Seerveld lately on various aspects about creating art, having been introduced through a friend. He uses words like "nuanced cheer" and "proffer spilled perfume" to describe how he envisions the purpose of art, and his words have stuck on me like how wine refuses wash from cloth.

I wonder if the photographer had any idea what kind of impact his photograph of Kim Phuc would have on viewers. Probably nil. I presume that the shot was taken in the moment--how can you possibly anticipate a vulnerable moment like that--but Ut was there and showed the rest of the world what he saw.

It may not be "nuanced cheer" that this photo brings, but hearing Kim Phuc say that looking at this image forty years later no longer brings back the unbearable weight of historical and emotional turmoil--instead, eventual forgiveness--that must make the photograph worth more than the permanent lifetime of a Pulitzer.

[napalmgirl-blog]