Remembering Kevin Carter

Remembering Kevin Carter

"I am depressed, without phone, money for rent, money for child support, money for debts,  money!  I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain, of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners.  I'm really, really sorry, The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

These were parts of the final written words of Kevin Carter.

On July 27, 1994 Kevin drove to the Braamfontein Spruit River, this was an area where he used to play as a child.  He committed suicide by taping one end of a garden hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the passenger side window.  He died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  He was only 33 years old.

"Who was Kevin?", you are asking me.  

He was the photographer who took the above picture.  This month, marks the 20 year anniversarry of the month this disturbing photograph was taken.  The picture won him the 'Pulitzer Prize' for the best picture for that year.  Now that he had won this prestigeous award, he had to deal not only with the acclaim, but also with the critical focus that came with this fame.  Some poeple within his circle were whispering that he had somehow set up the scene.  Others such as St. Petersburg Times questioned his ethics and stated "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene."  Did he help the child? was the first question that came to many peoples minds.

Briefly, this is how the photograph came to be:

In March 1993 Kevin went to Sudan for a business trip.  He travelled to the village of Ayod to witness the United Nations operation called "Lifeline".  This operation was to distribute food to the people of this country.  Just outside the village, He heard soft whimpering, he followed the sound and saw a Sudanese girl crawling to the food hand-out center.  The girl had stopped to rest, whereupon a vulture landed right behind her.  Kevin had stated that he waited for approximatelly 20 minutes because he was hoping that the vulture would spread its wings and in turn he would take the photograph, but the vulture did not do this.  Frustrated, Kevin took this haunting photograph and chased the vulture away.  However, he came under criticism for just photographing and not doing more for helping the Sudanese girl.

Kevin took his own life less then 4 months after photographing this scene.  How could someone who had moved so many people with his craft, end his life so soon after such an acheivement? 

RIP - Kevin Carter

Thank you for reading.