Nick Ut, the photographer whose 1972 image of nine-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing a napalm attack became the defining photograph of the Vietnam War, has filed a defamation lawsuit, according to a report by Australian Photography.

The suit marks an extraordinary turn for a photographer whose reputation has rested, for more than half a century, on a single frame made on 8 June 1972 along Route 1 near Trang Bang. Working for the Associated Press, Ut photographed the South Vietnamese napalm strike that burned the children of the village; his picture of the screaming girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running toward his camera ran on front pages worldwide and won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography in 1973.

Ut, who was 21 at the time and had been shooting war since his teens, famously drove the injured children to a hospital in Saigon after making his frames — an act that has become inseparable from the story of the photograph itself. He remained with the Associated Press for decades, later based in Los Angeles, and retired from the agency in 2017 after 51 years of service.

The precise target of the defamation action, the jurisdiction in which it was filed, and the specific statements Ut disputes were not detailed in the initial report. What the filing signals, however, is the photographer's willingness to defend in court both his authorship of the image and the circumstances under which it was made.

The 'Napalm Girl' photograph occupies a singular place in the history of photojournalism. It is held by the AP and has been reproduced in countless contexts — from textbook histories of the war to museum walls — and it has long been cited as evidence of a single news photograph's power to shift public perception of a conflict. That standing has also made the image, and its maker, a recurring subject of scrutiny and claims over the decades.

Ut has faced challenges to his account before. Questions raised in recent years about the circumstances of the Trang Bang attack — including claims concerning the origin of the napalm strike — have circulated widely online and in documentary films. The photographer has consistently maintained the veracity of his reporting from that day, and his lawsuit appears to be a direct response to statements he considers damaging to his professional standing.

Now 74, Ut continues to make public appearances around the anniversary of the photograph and around the legacy of Vietnam War photojournalism. The legal action, whatever its outcome, will test how a living legend of the form can protect a documented historical record against contested narratives — a question increasingly urgent for photographers of the Vietnam era, whose primary witnesses and participants are dwindling.

The case is at an early stage, and further filings should clarify the parties involved and the claims at issue. For a photograph that changed how the world saw a war, the courtroom will now become another venue in which its history is contested.