Nick Ut facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Nick Ut
Ut in 2016
Born	Huỳnh Công Út (1951-03-29) March 29, 1951 (age 74) Bình Quới, Châu Thành, Long An, French Indochina, French Union
Citizenship	American
Occupation	Photojournalism
Notable credit(s)	Pulitzer Prize World Press Photo National Medal of Arts

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut (born March 29, 1951), is a Vietnamese-American photographer who worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for his 1972 photograph The Terror of War, depicting children running away from a napalm bombing attack during the Vietnam War. In 2017, he retired. Examples of his work may be found in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

Biography

Born in Long An, Vietnam (then part of the French Indochina), Ut began to take photographs for the Associated Press when he was 15, just after his older brother Huynh Thanh My, another AP photographer, was killed in Vietnam. His closest friend in the Saigon bureau, Henri Huet, also died in 1971 after volunteering to take the weary Ut's place on an assignment.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Ut himself was wounded three different times in the war in his knee, arm, and stomach. He moved to Tokyo and arrived in Los Angeles two years later.

The Terror of War

The Terror of War, also colloquially called Napalm Girl, is Ut's best-known photograph and features a 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hit Trảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops on June 8, 1972. Before delivering his film with the photograph, Ut set his camera aside to rush 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life.

Audiotapes of then-president Richard Nixon in conversation with his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, show that Nixon doubted the veracity of the photograph, musing whether it may have been "fixed".

Family and later career

Ut is a United States citizen and is married with two children in Los Angeles. His photos of a crying Paris Hilton in the back seat of a Los Angeles County Sheriff's cruiser on June 8, 2007, were published worldwide; however, Ut was photographing Hilton alongside photographer Karl Larsen. Two photographs emerged; the more famous photo of Hilton was credited to Ut despite being Larsen's photo.

Accolades

The Terror of War was awarded World Press Photo of the Year in 1973

Nick Ut's iconic photograph, The Terror of War, won every major photographic award, such as the Overseas Press Club honoring him with the Best Photograph, Daily Newspaper or Wire Service. The George Polk Awards for News Photography, the World Press Photo for Photo of the Year, and the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography. He was the 2014 Lucie Awards honoree for Achievement in Photojournalism. Kerala Media Academy in India presented him with the World Press Photographer Prize in 2019.

On the 40th anniversary of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph in September 2012, Ut became only the third person inducted into the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism. In 2021, he became the first journalist to receive the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States federal governments.

Collections

Ut's work is held in the following permanent collection:

• National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

See also

In Spanish: Huynh Cong Ut para niños