Kevin Carter, “Struggling Girl”, Sudan 1993
In March 1993 Kevin Carter made a trip to Sudan.
Near the village of Ayod, Carter found a girl who had stopped to rest
while struggling to a United Nations feeding centre, whereupon a vulture had landed nearby. Careful
not to disturb the bird, he waited for twenty minutes until the vulture
was close enough, positioned himself for the best possible image and
only then chased the vulture away. At this point Carter was probably not yet aware that he had shot one of the most –or even the most- controversial photographs in the history of photojournalism.
The photograph was sold to The New York Times where
it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993. Practically overnight
hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had
survived, leading the newspaper to run a special editor's note saying
the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her
ultimate fate was unknown. On April 2, 1994 Nancy Buirski, a foreign New York Times picture editor, phoned Carter to inform him he had been awarded with the most coveted prize for photojournalism; the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.
As
with many dramatic photographs, Carter came under criticism for this
shot. He was blamed for just photographing — and not helping — the
little girl. The St. Petersburg Times in
Florida wrote: "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”. The
attitude that public opinion condemned was not only that of taking the
picture instead of chasing the vulture immediately away, but also the
fact that he did not help the girl afterwards –as Carter explained
later- leaving her in such a weak condition to continue the march by her
self towards the feeding centre. Carter committed suicide two years
after receiving the Pulitzer Prize.
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