Horribly disturbing photo.
A vulture waiting for a starving child in Africa to die so that it can eat it up.
This was shot by the photojournalist, Kevin Carter in 1993-94 when he had been to Sudan to report about the famine. The photo received lot of accolades and he was even awarded the Pulitzer prize for photography..
In an interview, Carter mentioned that he had spent 20 mins adjusting the camera to take the best shot. The child was actually crawling towards a food camp which was just 200 meters away. All he needed to do after taking the photo was to pick the child and spend a min to walk till the camp and leave it there, which he unfortunately did not do. He also said that he felt guilty for not having helped the child and returned to the same place after a week and was told that the child was no more.
This created lot of roars across the world and every newspaper/magazine criticized him for not being human enough to help the child.
The St. Petersburg Times in Florida said : "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"
3 months after winning the Pulitzer prize, Carter committed suicide..
The most thought provoking part in this, in my opinion is about the concept of humanity.. He won Pulitzer prize, he might deserve it, its the judges choice.
I agree that the photo was important to show the world about Sudan famine. At the same time, was taking the photo the only priority? Even a robot would have taken a photo. (Looking at the way technology is growing, in the next 20 years, you will be able to take photograph of any corner of the earth using satellites and robots).
So, what makes us different from robots? Our human nature. If it is a war, its fine if the photographer had not helped. Those who join the army know about the risks and it is not expected of a photographer to go and help soldiers wounded in a battle. There are doctors and ambulances for that. If its a concentration camp, it is not expected of the photographer to help anybody because doing so can cost his life. (the dictator would be angry and execute him)
But, in a famine like this, when you have 20 mins spare time to take a photoshoot but you dont have 2 mins to help the child....
Some might say the job of photojournalist is such that you should just shoot a photograph because the world has to see it. Helping the person is secondary. If thats the case, let me ask something. Suppose you are driving down the road and find that on the other side of the road, there is an accident and the victims are bleeding. Will you continue driving and go ahead because your job is just to drive your vehicle and reach the place or will you get down and try to help your bit.
I dont want you to come to conclusions. I dont want you to come to judgements. Carter might have done the right thing depending on the context or it might be wrong. But the takeaway from this picture must be that we are humans and we should give more priority to humanity than our professions.
Another takeaway is that food should not be wasted. I agree, the food saved here cannot be sent to Africa to feed poor kids but lets not forget that ours is still a developing nation and we have millions of starving kids in our own country. I hope every company canteen puts this picture at food counters so that people think twice before refilling and dont waste food later.
Some of you might feel that I am trying to show Carter in bad light. Well, all that I am trying to do here is describe the context in black and white with the help of reliable links and discussing about the takeaway from this description. Dont judge anything about Carter. Try to see what you can learn from a situation and make your life & others lives better. Maybe if you conclude that you will try to be human first and professional next, Carter will be happier to see that his photo has made a positive difference to your thinking.
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