Photographer who took iconic Vietnam War photo shoots pics at VinFast groundbreaking
Among the many photographers documenting the VinFast groundbreaking ceremony Friday was one who has seen Vietnam’s transformation from a nation crippled by decades of war to one that has spawned a company that plans to produce 150,000 electric vehicles a year in North Carolina.
Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut, won a Pulitzer Prize for his famous photo of children running from a South Vietnamese napalm attack that hit their village in 1972.
On Friday, he was invited by VinFast to photograph the official start of construction on its $4 billion auto plant in a rural corner of Chatham County. Ut, who visited a VinFast car factory in Vietnam two years ago, says the country’s transformation has been amazing.
“Two years ago, I hear that there’s a Vietnamese car, I didn’t believe it,” he said Friday. “I went back to Vietnam after the war. The country had nothing left.”
Ut, now 72, is officially retired from the Associated Press, for whom he started taking photos in Vietnam at age 16. But he still travels the world giving workshops and taking photos. He said the photos he took Friday will be distributed through Getty Images.
“I’m enjoying being retired, but I don’t want to stay home,” he said.
Wearing a backpack and juggling two cameras around his neck, Ut blended in with the other photographers and videographers jockeying for position, as VinFast executives and Gov. Roy Cooper and other state and local dignitaries mingled and made speeches.
Among the few to recognize him was Mehmet Demirci, a freelance photographer from Turkey who now lives and works in the Triangle.
“I’ve covered war, too,” Demirci said, when asked how he recognized Ut. “I’ve been to Iraq, Afghanistan. This is a small world for photographers. Everybody knows each other.”
Gesturing to Ut, he added, “Also, he’s a legend.”
Iconic photo from Vietnam War
Ut won the 1973 Pulitzer for spot photography for an image now recognized around the world and across generations. Among the children in the photo is 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc, whose clothes had been burned off in the napalm attack. Before delivering the film he shot that day, Ut took Kim Phúc to a hospital, and they have remained in touch ever since.
Ut is proud of the image; on his business card is a photo of him holding a blown-up copy of the original film negative.
He was especially pleased that a large copy of the photo was pasted to the side of a plane carrying 236 refugees from Russia’s war in Ukraine from Warsaw to Canada last summer. The words “No war” appeared next to the image in big letters. Kim Phúc, who lives in Canada and is often remembered as “Napalm Girl,” accompanied the refugees on the flight to their new home.
Ut has lived in Los Angeles for nearly 40 years, taking pictures of all sorts of Hollywood celebrities and events, including the O.J. Simpson trial.
“Every time somebody dies, I say, ‘That’s my picture,’” he said.
This was Ut’s first visit to North Carolina (“So beautiful here”). He said he hopes to return in a couple of years when the VinFast factory is done and starts producing cars.
