Haunting photographs taken over 50 years apart, yet the torment of the two girls feels identical. The iconic photo by Nick Uts of screaming children fleeing a deadly napalm attack has become a defining image of the Vietnam war. (L) Nicole Hester’s photo of a crying child in Nashville deserves the same iconic status.
Their anguish is visceral.
The searing torment of two young girls is captured for eternity. Though from vastly different times and places the feel is eerily similar.
We cannot look away.
We must not look away.
America’s pain is immortalized in these haunting images. Our humanity should be moved to right the wrong in the one where we still can.
Photo Nicole Hester /The Tennessean via AP March 2023
In one a child weeps while on a bus leaving the Covenant School in Nashville following a mass shooting that claimed 6 lives, 3 of them her peers. Powerfully captured by Nicole Hester of the Tennessean this image hits hard.
You feel the little girl’s agony, the fear, the keening, the pain written on her face.
You know she will never see the world the same way again.
And neither should we.
Trauma will chase her, her entire life.
As it did with the famous “Napalm Girl.”
Photo Nick Ut 1972
The iconic image of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl running naked down the road screaming in pain after an aerial napalm attack has been imprinted into our psyches. This Pulitzer Prize photo by Nick Ut shot on June 8, 1972, exposed the horror and brutality of the Vietnam war to the world.
It shook us to the core fifty years ago. It still does
Ut’s photo of Kim Phuc was a transformative moment.
The Decisive Moment
He captured what French Photographer Henri Cartier-Bressson coined “The Decisive Moment.” In an instant, life would end for some and change for many others in the small village of Trang Bang with the 9-year-old girl becoming the face of all that was wrong with the unpopular war.
The Napalm girl added strength to the anti-war movement. In an echo of today’s Republican deniers, then President Richard Nixon tried to imply that the photo was fake, to which Ut replied “The horror of the Vietnam war recorded by me did not have to be fixed.” The war ended a year later.
Both pictures will become part of our shared cultural memory, touchstones of tragedy that capture in an instance human horror.
Will Nicole Hester’s crying girl become a transformative moment for us now?
Can our legislators finally stop looking away?
Will they finally see the horror that is there in plain sight?
© Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream, 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Sally Edelstein and Envisioning The American Dream with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Envisioning The American Dream 
Thanks Sally. No words. Just sadness.
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There are no words left. We have said then in every which way, and yet nothing changes.
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Would photos of victims, shredded and sometimes decapitated prompt serious action in Congress or would they just become murder porn?
Given the lack of empathy shown for the hundreds and thousands of murdered victims of America’s multiple shootings over the years, I suspect nothing would happen, locked side doors and other nonsense would continue to get blame, and the victims would get the powerful ones’ “thoughts and prayers”.
Sorry to be so cynical. I kind of thought 20 dead first graders in a Connecticut would have resulted in bans and reforms. Silly me!
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It has been suggested, and I’m not sure it would help, that they should publish the gruesome photos of what military grade weapons are capable of. The public showing of pictures of Emmet Tills gruesome body are often referenced as changing the mind set of people. But the gun crowd are dug in so deep I’m not sure it would make a difference.
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There is that element of “patriots” who fly the flag, never served in the military, always attempt to involve themselves in patriot displays, try to make a show of thanking veterans for their service, yet are clueless about citizen responsibilities or proper flag display (from vehicle and wrapped around themselves…not good!) who would go into deep denial if shown the effects of their assault weapons. They are thee Second Amendment folks who know nothing else about the US Constitution.
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Yes, unfortunately, it would fall on deaf ears.
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We have learned much but changed nothing, a bit like the definition of insanity. Thanks for this post.
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