Starving Child and Vulture

KEVIN CARTER - ‘STARVING CHILD AND VULTURE’ Kevin Carter (born September 13th, 1960) was a south African photojournalist. His image “starving child and the vulture” was an image that caused Kevin carter a lot of heartache. In 1993 he flew to Sudan to capture images documenting the famine racking that land. days in to taking images in Sudan he heard whimpering and came across the toddler, weakened by lack of food too emaciated to even get to the feeding centre, this alone was hard for Kevin Carter to witness. As Carter took out his camera, he seen a ‘plump’ vulture land next to the Sudanese girl, and much to Carter’s dismay he was unable to help the toddler due to the disease she carried. This image shows the ethical dilemma photojournalist have to face when professional duty conflicts, but for Kevin this was a little too much to handle. Carter became a photojournalist because he felt he needed to document the sickening treatment between ethnic

groups that he had seen growing up in south Africa during apartheid, but never did he imagine he’d have to emotionally detach himself from his job due to the countless murders and horrific situations he found himself witnessing. This image strikes all who view it with a strong emotional trigger, (Hariman and Lucaites, 2007) and is hard to look at let alone bear witness to. Carter himself won the ‘Pulitzer prize’ for this image but by the end of July 1994 he took his own life, it is more apparent after him doing this that he hadn’t detached himself from the job and struggled with the heartbreak he had seen. His image ‘Starving child and vulture’ became iconic over the years due to the strong emotional value it possessed, and not only because of the emotion behind the image but the emotion felt when thinking about how carter had struggled through taking this and having to relive it. His other images I have chosen to look in to aren’t too far different in the sense that they also hold a strong emotional value but aren’t as well known, not that they don’t deserve the recognition but this image in particular showed a sense a pain like none of his other images. Kevin Carter’s work was shown all over the world, and whereas in way this allowed the reality of what was going on to be shown to raise awareness and support for those who needed it, Kevin found himself being tormented by those who found his work to be too much to look at. A huge downside to his image becoming iconic was the ridicule he received for taking the image and not putting down the camera to help the poor girl but given the circumstances and the situation he was in, there wasn’t more that he could do.