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Nick Ut's Photograph Essay

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Nick Ut’s photograph of the Children fleeing Napalm was taken during the Vietnam War on the 8th June 1972 where it appears he captured children fleeing the cloud of smoke that is behind them in photograph creating a more dark and dangerous feeling to the photograph that these children had to experience. All children within the photograph look extremely worried, shown as two are clearly screaming, one of whom is a young girl (Kim Phuc) who is naked. Kim Phuc, centre, is a 9-year-old girl fleeing her Vietnamese village with her clothes torn off due to the fire that had danced upon her body, which led to her being hospitalised for a year due to severe burns. There was a brief editorial debate whether this photograph should be published due to …show more content…

Pierce invented semiotic for an account of signification, representation and meaning. These semiotics included the iconic sign, indexical sign and symbolic sign and that these semiotics are included in photography. Take Nick Ut’s photograph this is clearly an iconic sign as it provides a visual or another perceptual image of the thing it stands for. For example, the focus of this photograph is on the young girl who is naked in the center of the photograph. She is clearly in pain as her face implies that she is screaming and that she is hurt as she is holding her arms out from her body. This photograph does not imply any reason for why she is in pain however the words within the caption relay what has happened within the image where it states ‘burned by napalm and has took off clothes as they were burning her’ which therefore tells a story equally. The way the children are running straight towards the camera creates the photograph to have haste but also for it to be powerful almost as if they are running towards the viewer. Kim Phuc now believes that the recording of this photograph has saved her, tested her and now freed her, showing that this photograph may have only been an in the moment shot of something tragic happening however this freed a girl and many other people as it let the audience know the tragedy that was being taken place in Vietnam at this very

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