Call it luck or call it serendipity, but what an absolutely amazing opportunity we had this year; to meet a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist, right here in the same country where over 40 years ago, he snapped what has become the most iconic image of the Vietnam War.
Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut was born March 29, 1951. Nick is a photographer for the Associated Press working out of Los Angeles. His best known photo is the Pulitzer Prize-winning picture of Phan Thị Kim Phúc, who was photographed as a naked 9-year-old girl running toward the camera to flee a South Vietnamese napalm attack on invading North Vietnamese at the Trảng Bàng village during the Vietnam War.
Several years ago, I ran into Nick at Hoan Kim Lake in Hanoi. I was leading the annual Vietnam Explorer Photo Tour and Nick was on vacation in Vietnam. Here’s a link to my blog post from our first meeting and a photo from our 2010 meeting below.
Nick is an easily recognizable guy, so when I saw a photographer with white hair, bushy eyebrows and several cameras hanging around his neck I knew it was him.
Since I had been following Nick’s work for many years and was familiar with his famous “napalm girl” photo, I approached him saying “Hi Nick, what are you doing here in Hanoi, aren’t you supposed to be shooting in LA?”… Being the super nice guy that he is, Nick responded with a smile, saying he was on vacation visiting friends in Hanoi. Since that meeting back in 2010, Nick and I have kept in touch by email and Facebook.
Photo by John Birgiolas, 2010
Nick keeps his Facebook page up to date almost daily, so, this year, while leading the tour, I noticed that he was in Vietnam again. I called Nick and invited him to come to the Hanoi Press Club for our farewell dinner that evening. Nick said that he couldn’t make the dinner but agreed to come meet the photo tour group at our hotel, which was coincidentally, just down the street from a wedding that he was attending in Hanoi’s Old Quarter.
What a pleasure it was for the group to meet “the man behind the famous photograph”. From everyone on the tour, we want to say …Thanks Nick!
