This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/14/2024
On June 8, 1972, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut was present when the South Vietnamese Army mistakenly bombed the village of Tr?ng Bàng with napalm. Ut was able to capture the aftermath of the strike and snap the image that has come to personify the tragedy of the Vietnam War. The 9-year-old girl at the center of the photo has torn off her clothes which had been set aflame by the napalm and runs towards the viewer. Moments after he snapped this photo, Ut put his camera aside and immediately helped rescue the young girl. "I cried when I saw her running... If I don’t help her, if something happened and she died, I think I’d kill myself after that" he later recalled. After taking the girl to a field hospital, Ut submitted his film to the Associated Press. The girl’s helpless, screaming image made this one of the most powerful photographs ever taken of war and went on to win Nick Ut both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year. As widely reproduced this photograph was, precious few Type 1s exist and those that do rarely reach the hobby. This example is a Type IV printed in 1989. The occasion for the reproduction was the reunion of photographer Nick Ut with “Napalm Girl,” 26-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, in Havana, Cuba. The photograph shows toning throughout with edge wear and production notations on its borders. As is common with Type IV photos, the caption is incorporated on the front of the print. The reverse shows staining throughout with a handwritten catalog number and the original 1989 caption slug is still affixed. The photograph measures 7 3/4” x 10 1/4” and has been encapsulated and graded a Type IV by PSA.