Nick Ut

Huỳnh Công Út, known professionally as Nick Ut, is a Vietnamese-American photographer for the Associated Press (AP) who works out of Los Angeles. He won both the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and the 1973 World Press Photo of the Year for "The Terror of War", depicting children in flight from a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War. His best-known photo features a naked 9-year-old girl, Phan Thị Kim Phúc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hit Trảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops. On the 40th anniversary of that Pulitzer Prize-winning photo in September 2012, Ut became the third person inducted by the Leica Hall of Fame for his contributions to photojournalism. On March 29, 2017, he retired from AP. On January 13, 2021 Ut became the first journalist to receive the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the federal government.