The Latest Breaking News from Nick Ut

First part of a series called ‘What is Truth’ focuses on the role of photography in shaping the narrative of global events

This article contains images that some may finding distressing, including of torture.

The Emmy award-winning performer who went from acclaim for his acting to notoriety when he was tried and acquitted in the killing of his wife, died Thursday at age 89.

He did skin grafts for Kim Phuc Phan Thi, a 9-year-old South Vietnamese girl, who was seen in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photo running down a road, screaming in pain.

Another American holiday. Another mass shooting. This time in Highland Park, Illinois, where at least seven were killed. We seem destined to both celebrate and mourn these days.

Phuc, pictured in 1972 running from napalm attack during Vietnam war, has final laser treatment in Miami

Fifty years ago a young photojournalist covering the war in his native Vietnam, took a photograph and saved the life of a young girl badly burned by a napalm attack.

‘Growing up I sometimes wished to disappear, not only because of my injuries but also because of shame and embarrassment of my disfigurement’

The girl, naked and screaming, ran directly toward Nick Ut’s camera -- and into history.

How does an image become an icon? It is estimated that we now produce more images in two minutes than we did in the entire 19th century. How, then, can one image be so powerful it can symbolise the horror of war and help mobilise anti-war sentiment?

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.”