While covering a famine in Sudan in 1993, photojournalist Kevin Carter found a malnourished child struggling to reach a U.N. feeding center as a vulture waited in the background. The photograph won a Pulitzer Prize, but the trauma of what he had seen led Carter to commit suicide only a year later.
by Minesh1989
33 Comments
That’s so sad!!
You can feel the silence in this photo…
I know I cannot do anything, I know it was 33 years ago, so why do I feel so ashamed ?
Imagine that poor little boy, dying slowly as the vulture starts to feast…
Unimaginable evil, why functioning governments refuse to do anything I don’t know…
https://preview.redd.it/88js8xe7pnrg1.jpeg?width=965&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=546b7e91a835dcd9449da67d381138c60a3f3759
Man stealing food from a starved boy
Delial
What happened to the kid?
Manic Street Preachers – great song
Today I learned that this is what the Manic Street Preachers song of the same name is about
Interesting, I suppose. But also, insanely tragic.
Dissociation saved me. This world is so mismanaged. 😭
Goddamn this just hurts the heart to see
The young boy actually made it to the UN aid station and survived but died a few years later in 2007 from a “fever”.
Shortly after 1996, I purchased Manic Street Preachers amazing “Everything must go” album in which they did a song about him…
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDr0QNCUd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLDr0QNCUd4)
And it wasn’t until after looking up the song that I learned he was an amazing anti-apartheid photographer right here in South Africa, and he committed suicide in a park just a few hundred meters from my childhood home.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter)
Imagine the things that happened and didn’t had a photo of it
Africa is insanely corrupt with funding. This is why I sneer at campaigns such as the “We Are The World” song from 1985. It’s a good effort, but wasted none the less.
This is so heavy and unnecessary. We’re way too evolved to allow this to happen, and yet… Deluded humanity.
We need more bombs and ways to kills eachother thats all that matters to put leaders…
Way back in the day…30 years ago, “Journalism” was a full on university major treated seriously. We had a class called “Journalism Ethics.” Usually, a journalist is supposed to stay neutral in the events they are covering. But as our professor said…”you have to be able to sleep at night…so keep that in mind too.”
Man it truly hurts to see the suffering alot of people have to endure while all these corrupt billionaires keep getting richer.
I remember the author said he shoo the vulture away
That’s a disturbing image! You can’t forget that! 🙁 🙏
A book called the House of Leaves fictionalized this picture and Kevin Carter
Read the book The Bang Bang Club if you want a real insight of the picture and the era.
It’s a challenging but fascinating read.
It’s quite a read when it wasn’t possible to send pictures around the world via the internet
I heard the Manic Street Preachers song about him yesterday and it got me thinking about this picture.
This is heartbreaking as fuck.
Unfortunately Carter couldn’t take the trauma and ended his life a year after taking the photo, saying,”I’m really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist. …depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”
“Ken” is a reference to his colleague and friend Ken Oosterbroek, who was shot to death by members of South Africa’s National Peacekeeping Force.
First time I saw this picture I did a double take. My brother’s name is the same and I hadn’t seen or talked to him in a few years. Though I believe my mom would have said something if he took up a career that sent him out of the country.
Carter’s suicide note read:
I’m really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist. …depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.
— Kevin Carter
Sorry if I’m being ignorant, but why didn’t the photographer help the child?
He actually committed suicide less than 4 months after, but I know that’s just semantics.
Suicide only 4 months later
My teacher in Journalism school who was a former front line photographer told us if he ever saw us stop to take a photo like this instead of running to help the kid he would make sure we never worked again