Kevin Carter
(September 13,
1960 in Johannesburg South Africa – July 27, 1994)
Photographer haunted by the horror of his work....
He was a photojournalist covering conflicts like the last years of
apartheid, seeing people getting executed or set at fire through the
lens, something no human being can live with.
His most famous photograph was done when he took the trip to
southern Sudan... while the famine suffering. He captured one of the
strongest photos ever of a girl collapsed on the way to the feeding
center. While a vulture landed near by, waiting for the child to
die. The photograph won the heavy prestigious Pulitzer prize in
1994.
However Carter was heavily criticized for not helping the child,
even though they were told not to intervene because of diseases. He
later said he regretted it, and after capturing the photo he chased
the vulture away, and that he cried for twenty minutes under a tree.
After the Pulitzer prize Kevin Carter was one of the "hottest"
photojournalists on the stage, many wanted to sign him, but Carter's
work wasn't something you did to feel good about yourself... he was
said to be a man of tumultuous emotions which
brought passion to his work but also drove him to extremes of
elation and depression.
"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 have gone to join Ken if I am that
lucky." “I'm really, really sorry, but the pain of life overrides the joy
to the point that joy does not exist”.
Two months after
being awarded the
Pulitzer prize, Carter committed
suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, at age 33.
