A Photo That Stopped the World.

Generations are defined by the images and events they grew up with. From the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon, all the way along to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the death of Princess Diana and, of course, the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001. All some of the most symbolic and poignant historical events of the last century, each either defined a generation or separated two, but they remain etched in the memory of even those of us who weren’t alive when they happened through the images that simply won’t go away.

In 1972, one harrowing image changed public attitudes to the Vietnam War to dissent, for millions of people. That image was, of course, the photograph taken by Vietnamese photographer Nick Ut of a young naked girl running across a country road, after being burned with napalm during a South Vietnamese bombing raid on her village. For years beforehand, many Westerners had been staunchly in protest of the war in Vietnam, and the widespread distribution of this photograph only added fuel to the fire. Of that fateful day in 1972, Ut says, “You know, I had been outside the village that morning and I took a lot of pictures. I was almost leaving the village when I saw two aeroplanes. The first dropped four bombs and the second aeroplane dropped another four napalm bombs.” Ut now claims, “The pictures were shown in America, they were shown everywhere. They were shown in all the Communist countries - in China and in Vietnam. They still use the photo. Even though pictures are taken in every war, they still show the picture of Kim. They don’t want it to happen again – not napalm.” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm)

This devastating photograph shows the horrors of the war right from the perspectives of those who were on the frontline by accident – the civilians. The girl’s nakedness show how said civilians were never shielded from the war, and that they were stuck in the middle of a battlefield, and however justified the attack, the photograph depicts the horrors of war in a clear and concrete manner, without being toned down for the masses. It unsurprisingly – and deservedly – earned Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize (Rademaker 2004).

Photography is a tool for the eternal capturing of a single moment in time. Photographers like to use their own views to preserve an image for all time so the other side of the photograph is artistic, not neutral. Just like a writer or an artist can use their imagination to show off their creativity, to do that photographers use nothing but the truth. Photographers like Nick Ut risked their lives so that they could show they world what their politicians, both then and now, don’t what them to see – another side of the story which is simply too powerful to be propaganda (Rademaker 2004).

The military has always been a significant hurdle for journalists to get around whilst trying to show the reality of an ongoing war. While there is necessary censorship of information that will jeopardize a particular mission, this necessary censorship applies only to very minute details, which a very sensible journalist will omit. The other side to this argument is the distribution of information that is nothing more than persuasive propaganda (Kennedy 2007).

Starting with the Spanish-American war in 1898, a journalist’s job when covering a war was to praise it, even if they wanted it to end. This was the same with the First and Second World Wars. However, by the time of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, television had begun to take hold and through this miraculous medium, people were able to see more of the world with which they were unfamiliar. In Vietnam, many television networks themselves were so cynical of the governments controlling them that they allowed their journalists to carry out reports that showed the war in all its horror. After the distribution of not just Kim Phuc’s photo, but also victims of events like the My Lai massacre and the conflict between South Vietnamese Buddhists and American forces, American public contempt for the war skyrocketed as quickly as the death toll. This change of heart in ordinary people is what is inspired when journalists dare to step out of their ceremonial positions, and become humanists. They are no longer trying to do their jobs, but rather, exposing the corruption of our politicians who should be trying to make a difference in a good way (Kennedy 2004).

But while throughout history war photography has gone from being used as propaganda to a tool for the spreading of the truth, it has also divided many into both wanting to win the war and to put and end to violence and suffering. As humans, we are undeniably obsessed with the suffering of others – the distribution on the 12 September 2001 of the infamous photo of a man falling out the North Tower of the World Trade Center to his death immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks received an angry response, but it has since emerged as the most well-known photo of the events of that infamous day (Scott 2006). Why do we often have a fascinated response from such confronting and depressing images? Perhaps we sometimes want to be challenged and moved, even without having homicidal tendencies, or that through seeing these kinds of images we get a glimpse of how our difficult lives could be worse, thus stopping us from taking so much for granted and enabling us to more often think of others and look on the bright side of life. For most of us, fascination with depressing things simply means a source of inspiration.

However, just as we sometimes forget that celebrities are just as flawed as we are, it is possible to forget the different or even more personal stories that people behind famous photographs have. In the same 1972 bombing of her village Kim Phuc lost two of her six brothers, with one of her surviving brothers being permanently blinded. She has crimson rope-like scars on her back as result of the removal of her burning clothes. In 1986 she was separated from her parents and sent to Cuba to study, where she met her husband Bui Hoy Toan, with whom she finally escaped to Canada in 1992 and had a son the following year (Plummer, Eftimediades, 1995). She is now a United Nations advocate for peace.

Kim Phuc, as a result of that photo, remains an accidental spokesperson for the inhumanity of war. But perhaps the strongest indicator of the power of that photograph is that even at the time it was printed in some of the most socially conservative newspapers in existence. This fact suggests that its statement about war made some of the most conservatively-inclined people of the day to look deeper into the actions and notions they were supporting. It continues to do that today.

However, Kim Phuc, whether she likes it or not, will never be able to either live down the photograph of her at nine years old, running away from war with napalm burning her skin, nor erase the harrowing memories of that day. We all may be able to come to our own conclusions about war from news reports or films, but unless we ever have the misfortune of being there, we will never discover the horrors of war in their full scale. Michael Kimmelman begs us to remember, however, that Kim’s unforgettable image also stands for millions of others, all throughout history, who as children or teenagers, were victims of war (Kimmelman 2006). Kim was indeed one of the more lucky ones since she lived to tell her tale, but the war will remain with her forever. “I know that picture changed the world, and it changed my life. I don’t want to remember that day,” Kim stated when attending a war photography workshop in 1995. At that same event, Nick Ut said, “ I thought something was missing. I thought how nice it would be if these guys who were killed could get involved. So even though we have photographers here who do underwater photos, who do fashion photos, one thing I wanted to point out with the memorial is that this is a fun job, it’s a good job, but people do die.” (Judson 1995) This makes us ponder the question, Why does suffering sell?

Nick Ut’s photograph was an image of modernity for the Baby Boomer generation. To be a part of modernity means finding ourselves living in an environment that promises an adventure and a change in us – and simultaneously, one which poses a very real threat to every part of our lives. Those of us who find ourselves in the middle of this maelstrom are often short-sighted enough to think they are the only ones in those situations. Indeed, this feeling has designated many nostalgic rumours of a pre-modern Paradise Lost, a feeling which usually stems from the loss of one’s innocence (Berman, p. 1). Upon seeing Kim Phuc’s sadly defining plight on newsstands and television news broadcasts, however, many Baby Boomers who felt disenchanted and without belonging were given a strong wake-up call. As previously stated, many of these people were staunchly opposed to the war in Vietnam before Kim Phuc’s image was shown all over the world, and its distribution only increased the number of participants in anti-war street protests. Due to the right-wing governments of the time, particularly that of Richard Nixon in the United States, their efforts fell on deaf ears, but the same Baby Boomers, as well as their offspring, are now protesting the war in Iraq thanks to brave and truthful reporting of that war. This is why journalism is the most influential medium.

With each passing generation, people are getting less impressionable and more starved for challenge. As absurd as it may sound now, fifty years ago all the media had to do to cause an uproar was to show Elvis Presley swiveling his hips. Since then we have matured more in fifty years than we did in five-hundred years. We now have a more cynical and jaded view of what we hear and see which makes us hungry for a more profound depiction of humanity (often making us search for our own answers), the good side and the bad side of it, as well as a natural yearning for such depictions in the human psyche (regardless of whether or not we have homicidal tendencies) through which we have become much more desensitized to violence. Journalists know what their audience wants, but all too often they can only deliver what their bosses know will sell. Why, most of the time, with the media do moral human issues like civil wars play second fiddle to ratings wars?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

· Ut, N. 2005, Picture power: Vietnam napalm attack, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4517597.stm
· Rademaker, R. 2004, The history utility of photography: a case study in Vietnam, http://194.3.120.243/humanities/ibhist/student_work/ia2004/erik_rademaker04.pdf
· Kennedy, B. 2004, Project report: Media, war and peace, pp. 3-4, http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/classes/STS390_04topessays/Bernadette_Kennedy.pdf, University of Wollongong
· Scott, J. 2006, Photography and forgiveness (Nick Ut’s Vietnam napalm, Queen’s Quarterly, find through ProQuest
· Plummer, W., Eftimediades, M. 1995, Double exposure: symbols of Vietnam, Phan Thi Kim Phuc and Mary Ann Vecchio recall the anguish, People Weekly, find through Infotrac
· Kimmelman, M. 2006, Photographs of Vietnam: bringing war back home, The New York Times, find through ProQuest
· Judson. G. 1995, Stepping out from the lens of history: frozen moments alter lives of subjects of 2 famous photos, The New York Times, find though ProQuest
· Berman, M. 1982/1988, “Introduction: modernity – yesterday, today and tomorrow,” taken from All that is solid melts into air, Reading 4, Resource Materials