To Shoot Or Not To Shoot?

To Shoot Or Not To Shoot?



It is more than true that a picture speaks more than a thousand words. This photograph was taken in June 8^th, 1972 by Nick Ut, an amateur photographer for the Associated Press outside Los Angeles. It’s intention was to communicate the horrors of the Vietnam War in a way words could never describe, helping to end one of the most devastating wars in world history. Now, let’s discuss the following questions:

Crying children, including nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam. Photograph: Nick Ut/AP  

Should this moment be made public?

It was indeed ethical to make this historic moment public, in order to communicate the world the horrors that Vietnamese were experiencing at that time.

Will being photographed send the subjects into further trauma?

In this specific scenario, Kim Phuc, naked girl in the centered of the photograph, was not subject of further trauma. According to the article, I’venever escaped from that moment: Gil in napalm photograph that defined theVietnam War 40 years on, a moment captured in the chaos of war that would serve as both her savior and her course on a journey to understand life’s plan for her.

“I really wanted to escape from that little girl,” says Kim Phuc, now 49. “But seems to me that the picture didn’t let me go.”

Kim Phuc giving a lecture at Oundle Festival of Literature in Cambridgeshire in 2010

Is the end a real good or something that merely appears to be good?  

According to the article, I’ve never escaped from that moment: Gil in napalm photograph that defined the Vietnam War 40 years on, Nick Ut purpose on taking that photo was to call-out attention of the media in order to find an end of the war.

'I cried when I saw her running,' said Ut, whose older brother was killed on assignment with the AP in the southern Mekong Delta. 'If I don't help her - if something happened and she died - I think I'd kill myself after that.'