One of the most searing images of the 20th century is once again the subject of global debate. The Terror of War, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph widely known as Napalm Girl, is undergoing a reappraisal. In May 2025, The Art Newspaper reported that World Press Photo had suspended attribution of the image, citing credible new evidence that the photo may not, in fact, have been taken by Nick Ut - the Associated Press photographer long credited with capturing the moment. Instead, the image may have originated from another Vietnamese photographer on the scene, either freelance photographer Nguyễn Thành Nghệ or military cameraman Huỳnh Công Phúc.
This unprecedented decision has sparked a new round of discussion around journalistic ethics, authorship, and the power of images to shape history. But for those in the art world, the implications also reach into another domain: Banksy’s 2004 screenprint Napalm. One of his most unsettling and iconic early works, Napalm takes the Napalm Girl photograph and subverts it with brutal clarity. In doing so, it forces us to confront not only the horror of war, but the cynical commodification of suffering.
The original Napalm Girl image, taken during a South Vietnamese airstrike in 1972, shows nine-year-old Kim Phúc running naked down a road, her skin seared by napalm. The photograph shocked the world, became a turning point in American public perception of the Vietnam War, and cemented the belief that a single image could change policy, sentiment, and memory.
Until now, the photograph has been attributed to Nick Ut, who won the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year for the image. However, a recent documentary titled The Stringer has cast doubt on Ut’s authorship. Several eyewitness accounts suggest Ut may not have had the correct lens to take the photo in question and may have instead published a photograph taken by a local Vietnamese freelancer.
Rather than reassigning credit, World Press Photo has chosen to suspend attribution entirely, a historic first for the organisation. It is, they said, “not a retraction but a recognition of doubt.” What does this mean for the legacy of the image? And how does this uncertainty affect artworks like Banksy’s Napalm, which use the image as cultural critique?
Banksy’s Napalm, also known by the ironic subtitle Can’t Beat That Feeling, is one of the artist’s most controversial and biting early works. The screenprint features Kim Phúc’s anguished figure from the Napalm Girl photo, unchanged, uncropped, flanked on either side by Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse, who gleefully hold her hands as if walking her through a theme park. It is a grotesque juxtaposition. The smiling mascots of global consumerism are paired with a child victim of war, transforming the original image from a photojournalistic document into a biting satire of Western hypocrisy. With the addition of Disney and McDonald's, Banksy draws a connection between imperial violence, corporate propaganda, and public indifference. Napalm is not merely an anti-war statement; it is an indictment of the way war is consumed, commodified, and sanitised in the modern world.
The photograph’s authorship, ironically, is secondary in Banksy’s work. His message relies not on who captured the image but on how it has been used, reproduced in newspapers, galleries, history books, and now on prints. With its meaning shaped more by its visibility than its origin, the image becomes a global cultural object, untethered from the singular act of authorship.
And yet, the authorship question only enhances Napalm’s impact. The revelation that the image may have been co-opted, even at the time, raises new layers of exploitation. If the credit was wrongly assigned, if a photographer gained awards and global recognition for a local Vietnamese cameraman’s work, then Banksy’s satire isn’t just aimed at corporations- it touches the very heart of how history is framed and who controls the narrative.
For collectors of Banksy prints, this moment reaffirms Napalm’s significance. The work, released in 2004 in a signed edition of 150 and an unsigned edition of 500, remains one of Banksy’s most politically direct images. And unlike many of his more playful pieces, Napalm is deliberately confrontational. As debates continue over who captured Napalm Girl, Banksy’s Napalm reminds us that the deeper question may not be who pressed the shutter, but how we use, abuse, or commodify the pain behind the picture. In the world of protest art, few works make that point more powerfully.
Read the full article from The Art Newspaper here.
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