This photograph “The Napalm Girl” (1972) depicting children fleeing from a Napalm attack during the Vietnam War captured by native Vietnamese photographer working for the Associate Press Nick Ut.
Towards the centre of this image, it depicts where a 9-year old Kim Phuc & her neighbours raced away of the Trang Bang Village in South Vietnam on June 8, 1972 where the South Vietnamese planes dropped a napalm bomb on Trang Bang, where this area has been severely damaged and occupied by the North Vietnamese forces.
AP Photographer Nick Ut snapped this photograph through the composition of Phuc running naked in the middle of the road from Ut taking the image from behind pleading for hope where her native village was war-stricken and it shows that she has no clothes and has little chance of survival with minimal protection and shelter on a black and white image emphasising despair and downfall.
Also in this image, Ut has taken line conveying scars around the village area such as damaged roads, abandoned and empty grasslands and the way other children wear their clothes highlights their plead for innocence seeing a messy and an untied t-shirt or pyjamas further explains that they’re uncomfortable or have sensed that they’re trapped in the middle of a bombing.
Furthermore, she was unsure of the fate that surrounds not only her own life but the other members of her family.
Kim Phuc and her other innocent group ran as far as possible to land at the nearest safety net of the South Vietnamese held-positions.
A South Vietnamese Air Force pilot thought they took the innocent group but it turned out to be a mistake when they took this group that are the soldiers from the North Vietnamese forces.
This has led to a bombing which has claimed the lives of two of Kim Phuc’s cousins and two other villagers from the Trang Bang Village area.
Kim Phuc survived from this attack but was badly burned and her clothes was torn off.
After this attack, Nick Ut visited her bedside at the Barsky Hospital in Saigon where Phuc’s chances of survival has been small but after a 14 month stay and 17 surgical procedures, she was able to return home.
Decades later, Phuc recalled this image during the bombing as “Upsetting” and has recalled it when she was yelling, “Nong Qua, Nong Qua” (too hot, too hot) when she looked at the image many years after her recovery.
Eventually in 2015, she has finally undergone burns treatment which has finally healed her back where she carried the damaged area on her back.
I find this image is really emotional to as why is military holding back young innocent children where they don’t have the opportunity to have proper famine, shelter and even education than to heavily rely on military activities to fight one enemy body to another.
Furthermore, this image shows us that we remind of the horror that has shocked not only the entire nation but the entire world.
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