Close reading fotografii reporterskiej: Nick Ut, Groza wojny
A Close Reading of a Reportage Photograph: Nick Ut, “The Terror of War”

Summary/Abstract: The essay brings an exhaustive analysis of the semantically productive features discernible in the visual structure of the photograph The Terror of War, taken by Nick Ut near the mistakenly napalm-bombed town of Trảng Bàng. The unique nature of the famous photograph lies in the fact that, despite circumstances that were extremely restrictive in terms of the timing, perspective and composition of the frame, by a sheer stroke of luck it proved possible to capture on film an image that is extremely meaningful and semantically loaded. The semantics of the image was determined by the author by comparing this image and the original frame with a photograph of the same situation taken by Ut a moment later, as well as, above all, through a detailed analysis of the image’s structure. This structure reveals the essential characteristics of the language of narrative images, which constitute the close dependence of semantics on the rigour of composition as syntax. Through them, the photograph acquires a highly expressive iconic character, not only in the sense that it has become a kind of an “icon” perpetuating the image of a specific event in collective consciousness and historical memory, but above all in the sense defined by Max Imdahl’s conception of the iconics.

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