Jun 12 2007 07:23 AM
Interesting.
| ] A far cry from Vietnam By DAVID HINCKLEY DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER Tuesday, June 12th 2007, 4:00 AM Phan Thi Kim Phuc was crying because napalm - black, oily blazing jellied gasoline - was burning the skin off her back. Paris Hilton was crying because she had just been told she had to serve her 23-day jail sentence in jail. Funny things, tears. They can be triggered by the happiest moments or the saddest. They can be set off by brutal pain and sheer terror, as they were for Kim Phuc. Or they can simply mean you're feeling sorry for yourself. Like Paris. But these tears, it turns out, had something in common: Exactly thirty-five years apart, they both ended up in the lens of Nick Ut's camera. Both pictures soon spread around the world, reinforcing the power of a memorable image at the same time their very different messages illustrate the yin and yang of photojournalism. On June 8, 1972, Ut was a 21-year-old photographer for the Associated Press' Saigon bureau. The Saigon native had carved himself a job taking pictures from the middle of the war. He rose around 5 a.m. that day, found a driver, put on a flak jacket and headed up Route 1, a hot zone. Early in the afternoon, South Vietnamese commanders called in an air strike on the outskirts of a village where Communist troops had been seen. When the bombing ended, villagers poured out onto Route 1. A woman carried a baby who would soon die. Kim Phuc had pulled off her clothes and fled in Ut's direction, screaming: "Nong qua, nong qua!" which means "Too hot, too hot!" Moments later, Ut commandeered a car and carried Kim Phuc into it. He got her to a hospital an hour away. By then, she had passed out from the pain. Slim as the chances were for a young girl in a country with too many casualties and too few medical facilities, Kim Phuc survived. She made her way to Toronto, where she lives today with her family. She and Ut, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph of her terrified flight down Route 1, remain in touch. Ut today lives in L.A. He still works for the AP, where he fights his wars for pictures of celebrities, preferably in nonlethal distress. He's photographed the trials of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Phil Spector, among others, so he wasn't surprised Friday when he was sent out to cover Hilton, who had just been ordered back to jail after being let out on house arrest. The street in front of her West Hollywood home was solid with paparazzi, and a tarp covered the gate, making photos tricky. "I was lucky to get the shot I did," said Ut. "I focused on her blond hair when she got out." Unlike that afternoon in Saigon, getting the picture finished Ut's mission. He probably won't win another Pulitzer this time, and neither does he try to contrast this world to that one. Asked about celebrity versus war photography, he says only, "It's very different." |
[url=http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2007/06/12/2007-06-12_a_far_cry_from_vietnam.html]A Far Cry From Vietnam[/url]