Olde Posts Addenda (7)

    Since all of the news is "breaking" these days, here are some more stories which have broken and are related to older news items in MM. 

Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823-1900) Cropsey has been a subject in MM because I appreciate landscape paintings and, more importantly, because a painting of his was once found on the campus of UWO (Western). Forty-five years ago, the selling of Backwoods of America caused quite a controversy, even though $665,000 was received by UWO. For a discussion of the "Cropsey Controversy" see, Jasper Cropsey and McIntosh Gallery in the Winter, where it is discussed again. In a post about The Hudson River School it is noted that Cropsey's "Autumn Landscape With Cattle" sold for $325,000 (US) in 2021. The work pictured below is now offered by Questroyal Fine Art, if you are Christmas shopping. 

Doug Sneyd (R.I.P.) - Art of a Different Kind
   Back in 2017, I discussed three Canadian Cartoonists, Barry Blitt, Bruce McCall and Doug Sneyd. Mr. Sneyd and my mother-in-law attended the same school in Guelph. He died in Orillia in January, 2025. Apart from my brief bit in MM, more is learned in the obituary from Mundell Funeral Home LTD. Douglas "Doug" Mord Sneyd:
   "Doug was a renowned commercial artist, illustrator, and cartoonist. He was born in Guelph Ontario, one of seven siblings. From humble beginnings, as a teenager, Doug sketched silhouettes at the Canadian National Exhibition. After high school, Doug was employed as a commercial and portrait artist in Montreal and Toronto....

Doug became a cartoonist for Playboy magazine in 1964 and was the longest contributor with over 400 full-page colour cartoons. Also in the mid 1960s, Doug became a daily political cartoonist, first with “Doug Sneyd” in the Toronto Star and later with “Scoops” that he syndicated in over 150 North American papers. These features ran for nearly 20-years. Doug followed up with a heartwarming feature, “Wee Whimsy.”

Photos and the War in Vietnam

   You will have seen the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of the child who is generally referred to as "Napalm Girl", and I provide one in that post. That girl is now a grown woman, who lives in Ontario. In another post, "Napalm Girl" (Again), I discussed the controversy which has developed around who actually took the photo. I provide photos in those posts and will not do so again.
   The addenda is this: a film about the controversy has just been released and there will be more reviews, like this one: "‘The Stringer: The Man Who Took the Photo’ Review: Freelancing Woes: Was a Freelance Photographer Intentionally Left out of the Famous Vietnam War Photo of “Napalm Girl”?" Beatrice Loayza, New York Times, Nov. 27, 2025.
   "As far as documentaries go, Bao Nguyen’s “The Stringer” is a relatively straightforward work of investigative reportage. Its objective? To uncover the truth behind “The Terror of War,” a.k.a. “Napalm Girl,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Kim Phuc Phan Thi, a naked Vietnamese girl who is fleeing her village with other children in the aftermath of a 1972 napalm attack."
   There is another review in The Globe and Mail: "I Heard the Rumours About the 'Napalm Girl' Photograph Decades Ago: The Question of Who Took It Reflects the Ambiguity of War," Denise Chong, Dec. 5, 2025.
Post Script: 
  The following article was written a day after I posted this. Given that MM has provided so much about this incident, I thought it should be included. The subtitle summarizes the point which is being made by someone who was there: "I Was There When 'Napalm Girl' Was Photographed: The Stringer Does Nothing to Shake My Strong Belief That Nick Ut Captured the Famous Image," David Burnett, The Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2025.

Menus
   In 2018 I told you about collections of menus in Food History. If you are shopping for someone who likes to cook or dine out, this new book is an option: Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History, by Nathalie Cooke. Professor Cooke is in the Department of English at McGill, where this is found: 
Nathalie Cooke's Latest Book: Tastes and Traditions. It is published by Reaktion Books and is found on Amazon or available from Indigo, where more can be learned.
   There is also this review by James Chatto in the October issue of the Literary Review of Canada: 

"À la carte: "According to a delicious art form."An English literature professor at McGill University, Nathalie Cooke is an expert at detecting nuances of meaning and historical resonance in the written word. Having set out her thesis that an old menu can tell “the belated reader” much more than simply what was once for dinner, she organizes her material according to half a dozen themes, each one explored through a generous number of examples. Cooke is a skillful curator, and her carefully chosen, clever juxtapositions prevent her book from being a mere list or catalogue. The first chapter, for instance, considers the design and visual appeal of menus, taking us from handwritten and painted mementoes of elaborate feasts hosted by Louis XV in the 1750s to a modern Bangkok restaurant’s bill of fare composed entirely of emoji. En route, we encounter cards designed by Toulouse-Lautrec and Albert Robida, the gorgeous offerings of luxury ocean liners, and the mixed-media assemblages of the 1960s artist-chef Daniel Spoerri’s “New Realism.”
  If you add her 190 illustrations to the ones found in my post about menu collections, you will have a substantial visual resource related to food. If you need more convincing, see also: "Old Menus Serve up a Glimpse of our Past; McGill Professor Nathalie Cooke Whets Readers' Appetite with a Book on the Evolution of Dining," Susan Schwartz, Montreal Gazette, August, 23, 2025.

"Napalm Girl" (Again)

     Back in 2022 there were many stories about the photograph of a naked girl running down a road in Vietnam. It had been taken fifty years before and it appeared on the front pages of many newspapers in the summer of 1972. You will be spared from seeing the photo here, but if you want to view it, see the post I did about the "Napalm Girl" and the 50th anniversary of that photo. 
  Prurience or sensationalism were certainly not the motivators behind that post, nor are they now.  I chose the subject because the "Napalm Girl" is Kim Phuc, who is living in Ontario and wants her story to be known. She and here husband were actively involved in promoting peace and supporting refugees. See Napalm Girl for all the details. 
  The picture is very much in the news again, which is why I am posting about it, yet again. I will summarize the current publicity about the picture and provide the sources you need to read about the issue involved.
   There is no dispute about the authenticity of the photograph, but a controversy has developed about who took it. A documentary appearing at the Sundance Festival with the title, "The Stringer", claims that a stringer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, took the picture, not the AP staff photographer, Nick Ut, who won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Details about how the film was attributed are apparently outlined in the documentary and are discussed elsewhere, including in a 23 page report by the AP (provided below.) The AP stands by the photo as does Ut and Kim Phuc: 
  "In a statement to CBC, Kim Phuc said she doesn't have a clear memory of the day where she was burned, but rejected claims raised in The Stringer. She said she clearly remembered Ut as the only journalist willing to stop shooting to take her to a nearby burn unit, saving her life. That combined with memories from her family and other eyewitnesses, she wrote, convinced her of Ut's role." 
The source for that statement and others are included at the end of this post.

Another Photo
   Since the authenticity of the photograph of the "Napalm Girl" is not questioned, I will turn briefly to another picture from Viet Nam which was also widely displayed. It was taken on Feb.1,1968 and on its 50th anniversary there were also many stories about it.  Although it was taken four years before "Napalm Girl" and both photos were important, the Vietnam War continued for many more years and that leads one to question somewhat, the title of this article: "A Photo That Changed the Course of the Vietnam War," Maggie Astor, New York Times, Feb.1, 2018.
   "Fifty years ago today, the national police chief of South Vietnam calmly approached a prisoner in the middle of a Saigon street and fired a bullet into his head. A few feet away stood Eddie Adams, an Associated Press photographer, eye to his viewfinder. On a little piece of black-and-white film, he captured the exact moment of the gunshot.... By morning, this last instant of his life would be immortalized on the front pages of newspapers nationwide, including The New York Times. Along with NBC film footage, the image gave Americans a stark glimpse of the brutality of the Vietnam War and helped fuel a decisive shift in public opinion. “It hit people in the gut in a way that only a visual text can do,” said Michelle Nickerson, an associate professor of history at Loyola University Chicago who has studied the antiwar movement during the Vietnam era. “The photo translated the news of Tet in a way that you can’t quantify in terms of how many people were, at that moment, turned against the war.... A police chief had fired a bullet, point-blank, into the head of a handcuffed man, in likely violation of the Geneva Conventions. And the official was not a Communist, but a member of South Vietnam’s government, the ally of the United States.
“You can talk about ‘the execution photograph from the Vietnam War,’ and not just the generation who lived through it but multiple generations can call that image to mind,” said Susan D. Moeller, the author of “Shooting War: Photography and the American Experience of Combat,” and a professor of media and international affairs at the University of Maryland. “It was immediately understood to be an icon.”

Sources: 
  The AP Report has the photograph on its cover: "Investigating Claims Around 'The Terror of War' Photograph," Jan. 15, 2025.
["The Napalm Girl" photograph is also known as "The Terror of War" photograph.]
   “For the past six months, aware that a film challenging this historical record was in production, the AP has conducted its own painstaking research, which supports the historical account that Ut was the photographer. In the absence of new, convincing evidence to the contrary, the AP has no reason to believe anyone other than Ut took the photo.”
   "Sundance Doc, 'The Stringer' Challenges Who Took Napalm Girl Photgraph," Lindsey Bahr, AP, Jan.27, 2025
   "Controversial Doc, 'The Stringer' Investigates Famous Vietnam War Photo,Jada Yuan, Washington Post, Jan.27, 2025.
   " 'Napalm Girl' Photographer Nick Ut, Responds to Claim That He Didn't Take Famous Photo: 'A Slap in the Face', Tracy Brown, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12, 2025.

"NAPALM GIRL"

 

Although the war in Vietnam was long ago and fought far away, there are many who are now in Ontario because of it. One of them is Kim Phuc Phan Thi, who is pictured above. She is better known as the “Napalm GIrl”, pictured below.

   In early June there were many articles about the “Napalm GIrl” because it was fifty years ago on June 8, 1972 that Kim Phuc was set afire. There are many horrible pictures and news stories about the current Russo-Ukrainian War, so you may have avoided reading about the older Vietnam one. It is worth doing so, however, and some articles are provided below. The “Napalm Girl” “wants her story and work for refugees to be a message of peace.” She and her husband were recently on a humanitarian flight that brought over 200 refugees from Warsaw to Regina.

Post Script: 

   Kim Phuc lives in Ajax with her husband and mother!

   I did not realise, or had forgotten, that she was a victim of “friendly fire”, in that her village was mistakenly targeted by the Republic of Vietnam Air Force. 

   Over the years, her attitude toward the photograph has changed, as you will learn from the sources below. There are also debates about whether such a graphic photo should be displayed. About a half dozen years ago, Facebook censored the photo and a controversy ensued. The photo was taken by the AP photographer Nick Ut and the official title of it is “The Terror of War”, not “Napalm Girl.” Mr. Ut received the Pulitzer Prize for the photo.

   I also am in Ontario because of the war in Vietnam, as is a Vietnamese friend of mine here in London. I will question him about Kim Phuc’s name which appears in various forms in this post and in the sources provided. The Wikipedia entry is under Phan Thi Kim Phuc, but as the author of the first article below her name is given as, Kim Phuc Phan Thi.

The Bonus:

   The Vietnam War was covered extensively in Canadian sources. The Globe and Mail reporter, Eric Reguly, has just produced a book about his father, Robert, who covered the war for the Toronto Star. For a review see: "Ghosts of War: Chasing My Father's Legend Through Vietnam, Review: Eric Reguly's Ghosts of War Shows the Cost and Rewards of Investigative and Combative Journalism," David Moscrop, The Globe and Mail, April 22, 2022.

"In Ghosts of War: Chasing my Father’s Legend Through Vietnam, The Globe and Mail’s European bureau chief Eric Reguly follows his father’s coverage of the Vietnam War through the archives and into the country itself. The small volume reads as a study of a historical moment and of the costs and rewards of investigative and combat journalism. The apogee of the book is the 1960s, but the take-aways – war is hell; the powerful seek to obscure the truth but good journalists must find it nonetheless; effective reporting requires shoe leather – speak to our moment."

Sources:

This article is written by Ms. Phan Thi.

"It’s Been 50 Years. I Am Not ‘Napalm Girl’ Anymore," New York Times, June 6, 2022

By Kim Phuc Phan Thi. Ms. Phan Thi is the founder of the Kim Foundation International, which provides aid to child victims of war. Here is how it begins:

"I grew up in the small village of Trang Bang in South Vietnam. My mother said I laughed a lot as a young girl. We led a simple life with an abundance of food, since my family had a farm and my mom ran the best restaurant in town. I remember loving school and playing with my cousins and the other children in our village, jumping rope, running and chasing one another joyfully.

All of that changed on June 8, 1972. I have only flashes of memories of that horrific day. I was playing with my cousins in the temple courtyard. The next moment, there was a plane swooping down close and a deafening noise. Then explosions and smoke and excruciating pain. I was 9 years old.

Napalm sticks to you, no matter how fast you run, causing horrific burns and pain that last a lifetime. I don’t remember running and screaming, “Nóng quá, nóng quá!” (“Too hot, too hot!”) But film footage and others’ memories show that I did...."

Growing up, I sometimes wished to disappear not only because of my injuries — the burns scarred a third of my body and caused intense, chronic pain — but also because of the shame and embarrassment of my disfigurement. I tried to hide my scars under my clothes. I had horrific anxiety and depression. Children in school recoiled from me. I was a figure of pity to neighbors and, to some extent, my parents. As I got older, I feared that no one would ever love me.

Meanwhile, the photograph became even more famous, making it more difficult to navigate my private and emotional life. Beginning in the 1980s, I sat through endless interviews with the press and meetings with royalty, prime ministers and other leaders, all of whom expected to find some meaning in that image and my experience. The child running down the street became a symbol of the horrors of war. The real person looked on from the shadows, fearful that I would somehow be exposed as a damaged person.

Photographs, by definition, capture a moment in time. But the surviving people in these photographs, especially the children, must somehow go on. We are not symbols. We are human. We must find work, people to love, communities to embrace, places to learn and to be nurtured.

It was only in adulthood, after defecting to Canada, that I began to find peace and realize my mission in life, with the help of my faith, husband and friends. I helped establish a foundation and began traveling to war-torn countries to provide medical and psychological assistance to children victimized by war, offering, I hope, a sense of possibilities."

The CBC interviewed Ms. Phan Thi: You can read it here.

"50 Years Later, 'Napalm Girl' Has a Message for Children in Ukraine: Kim Phuc Phan Thi, Now Living in Ajax, Ont., Was 9 When She Was Burned by Napalm in Vietnam War," Sylvia Thomson · CBC News · Posted: Jun 11, 2022. The picture below is from the CBC interview.

The Facebook controversy was reported in Time:

"The Story Behind the 'Napalm Girl' Photo Censored by Facebook," Time, Sept. 9, 2016.

"This week, Facebook briefly removed and quickly reinstated one of the most powerful images to emerge from war—a 1972 photograph of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl—after initially saying the image violates the company’s policies on displaying nudity. A censorship battle ensued. Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief of Norway’s Aftenposten, slammed Mark Zuckerberg for a perceived abuse of power, calling the CEO of Facebook “the world’s most powerful editor.” On Friday, the company reinstated the picture and said “the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal.” An initial Facebook statement recognized its iconic status but said “it’s difficult to create a distinction between allowing a photograph of a nude child in one instance and not others.” The picture, taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, has become an icon of conflict photography. The faces of collateral damage and friendly fire are generally not seen. This was not the case with nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc."

The Associated Press offers a story about the Ukrainian refugee flight:

" 'Napalm Girl' Escorts Ukranian Refugees on Flight to Canada," July 4, 2022.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — "Phan Thị Kim Phuc, the girl in the famous 1972 Vietnam napalm attack photo, on Monday escorted 236 refugees from the war in Ukraine on a flight from Warsaw to Canada. Phuc’s iconic Associated Press photo, in which she runs with her napalm-scalded body exposed, was etched on the private NGO plane that is flying the refugees to the city of Regina, the capital of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan."