Pulitzer winning photographer donates photos to Vietnam’s museum
Former Associated Press war photographer Nick Ut (real name Huynh Cong Ut) handed over his two cameras and 52 photos to the Vietnam Press Museum at a ceremony on June 1.
Former Associated Press war photographer Nick Ut (Left) hands over his camera to the Vietnam Press Museum. (Photo: hanoimoi.com.vn)
Hanoi (VNA) - Former Associated Press warphotographer Nick Ut (real name Huynh Cong Ut) handed over his two cameras and52 photos to the Vietnam Press Museum at a ceremony on June 1.
Some of the photos were taken during the war in Vietnam andothers after 1975. Many have never been published before.
Nick Ut, who was born in 1951 in the southern province ofLong An, now resides in Los Angeles. He began taking photographs for AP when hewas 16. He had also covered battles in Laos and Cambodia.
After the war in Vietnam ended, he was sent to Japan towork. In 1977, he moved to Los Angeles, where he continued working for APcapturing news events and the lives of Hollywood stars.
Since his retirement in 2007, Nick Ut has returned toVietnam more often to take pictures of people and landscapes.
His photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, a nine-year-old girl runningnaked along the road crying from burns inflicted by a napalm bomb dropped bythe US in the southern province of Tay Ninh in 1972, won a Pulitzer Prize in1973.
The “Napalm Girl” photo shocked the world when it was sentfour hours later by the AP office in Sai Gon to AP headquarters in New York,igniting an anti-American war movement in the US and Europe. It also changedPhuc’s life. As a war victim, she has travelled around the world to talk aboutthe American war in Vietnam as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador.
On May 6 this year, the Pulitzer winning photographer donateda set of five historic photos, including the “Napalm Girl”, to the VietnameseWomen’s Museum in Hanoi. Four other photos were taken at the same place on June8, 1972, including a photo taken by one of Nick Ut’s colleague, which captured NickUt pouring water on Phuc’ body to ease her pain while waiting for a car to takeher to hospital. -VNA
VNA
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Former Associated Press war photographer Nick Ut (Left) hands over his camera to the Vietnam Press Museum.