What does one do when faced with erasure? That’s the question ‘The Stringer’ pursues as it attempts to trace the origins of an iconic Vietnam War photograph.

Nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, better known as the “Napalm Girl”, was captured running from a Skyraider bombing in Trang Bang on a 50mm Pentax. Naked, arms outstretched and a face covered in agony, she became synonymous with pain that war can inflict.

Associated Press (AP) staffer Nick Ut, credited with taking the 1972 photograph, earned a Pulitzer, a World Press Photo of the Year and repute.

Cut to the 2020s. Carl Robinson, the editor who wrote the original caption and credit at AP’s Saigon bureau, emails photographer Gary Knight with a provocative claim: an unnamed stringer, not Ut, may have taken the photograph.

Across its 1-

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