True Story: The Photo that Took the Life of the Photographer
Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist. He died by suicide at the age of 33 because of a photograph. He had won a Pulitzer Prize for his famous photograph of a starving baby being stalked by a vulture in the Sudan. Carter’s winning photo shows a heart-breaking scene of a starving child who collapsed […]
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Kevin Carter was a South African photojournalist. He died by suicide at the age of 33 because of a photograph. He had won a Pulitzer Prize for his famous photograph of a starving baby being stalked by a vulture in the Sudan.
Carter’s winning photo shows a heart-breaking scene of a starving child who collapsed on the ground, struggling to get to a food centre during a famine in the Sudan in 1993. In the background, a vulture awaits the emaciated child to die and devour.
He was also awarded the American Magazine Picture of the Year for the same shot, no mean achievement for a ‘foreigner’.
Kevin Carter took the picture above of the three AWB members being shot during their abortive invasion of Bophuthatswana. It was a picture that made nearly every front page in the world, the one real photograph of the whole campaign.
The horrors he had witnessed over the years had finally caught up with him. In his line of work, it was often hard to look, let alone photograph.
