The photographer behind "The Vulture and the Little Girl," depicting a starving child during Sudan's 1993 famine, Kevin Carter killed himself the following year.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
Kevin CarterKevin Carter’s most famous photo, The Vulture And The Little Girl, captured during the Sudan famine of 1993.
When this photograph capturing the horror of the Sudanese famine was published in The New York Times on March 26, 1993, the reader reaction was intense to a level scarcely seen before or since. Many people said that Kevin Carter, the photojournalist who took this image, was downright inhumane and that he should have dropped his camera to run to the child’s aid.
The controversy only grew when, a few months later, Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo. But by the end of July 1994, Carter was dead by his own hand, haunted by what he saw and photographed in Sudan.
YouTubeA Pulitzer-prize winner associated with the “Bang Bang Club” of photojournalists in South Africa, Kevin Carter killed himself following his work during Sudan’s 1993 famine.
For years, emotional detachment allowed Kevin Carter to witness countless tragedies and still continue to do his job. But the vulture photo and the subsequent public outcry ultimately proved too much to bear.
In the end, it became painfully clear that Kevin Carter hadn’t been detached at all. He had been deeply and fatally affected by the horrors he had witnessed.
How Kevin Carter’s Early Life Inspired His Photojournalism
Kevin Carter was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1960, in the midst of apartheid. From a young age, he was appalled by the racial segregation and violence he witnessed around him on a daily basis.
Carter initially planned to become a pharmacist, but he had to drop out of school after he was drafted into the South African Army. He decided to enlist in the Air Force instead, and he soon discovered that racism was just as rife in the military as it was in the civilian world. While defending a Black mess hall employee from insults in 1980, Carter was badly beaten by his fellow servicemen.
He deserted his post for a time following the incident, but he ultimately returned to finish out his required service, and he was on guard duty at the Air Force headquarters in Pretoria during the Church Street bombing of May 20, 1983. The attack killed 19 people, and the grisly scene inspired Carter to become a photojournalist and expose the brutality of apartheid to the world.
So, after leaving the Air Force later that year, Carter took a job at a camera supply store and began making contacts in the world of journalism. He first worked as a sports photographer for the Johannesburg Sunday Express and then moved on to capturing gritty images of apartheid-era violence for the Johannesburg Star.
By 1990, he was part of the Bang-Bang Club, a group of four conflict photographers who traveled through South Africa documenting the brutal attacks that continued even as the apartheid system officially came to an end.
The Bang-Bang Club And The Horrors Of Apartheid-Era South Africa
The Bang-Bang Club consisted of Kevin Carter, Greg Marinovich, Ken Oosterbroek, and João Silva. The name was born from an article in a South African newspaper and referred to the violence that the men put their lives on the line to document.
Indeed, their work was dangerous. The four photographers weren’t afraid to step right into the action to get the best shot if it meant revealing the reality of life in South African townships to a wider audience.
Carter and his colleagues witnessed vicious political unrest, protests, and bloody clashes between apartheid supporters and anti-apartheid “comrades.” In the mid-1980s, Carter became the first person to photograph the violent “necklacing” execution method in which a tire filled with gasoline is placed around a victim’s neck and lit on fire.
WordPressKevin Carter and the other members of the Bang-Bang Club.
As Harold Evans reported in an essay titled “Reporting in the Time of Conflict” for the Newseum, Kevin Carter later explained the ethical dilemma he’d faced while documenting the incident. “I was appalled at what they were doing,” he said. “I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures… then I felt that maybe my actions hadn’t been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing to do.”
It wasn’t the last time Carter would question the ethics of his work, however. Many of those same feelings arose once more in 1993, when he traveled to South Sudan to report on the famine ravaging the country.
Kevin Carter’s Controversial Photo Of The Vulture And The Little Girl
In March 1993, Carter was given the opportunity to document the famine that had been brought about by political unrest and civil war. He and João Silva traveled to the country and flew to the town of Ayod with a group that was providing food aid. There, they snapped photos of the masses of people who were starving to death, but the most poignant image Carter captured featured just one tiny subject.
VimeoKevin Carter accompanied by soldiers while shooting during the Sudan famine.
In the photo, known as The Vulture and the Little Girl, an emaciated child collapses in the dirt while trying to reach a nearby food center. A vulture looks on from just a few feet away, waiting for the youth to die so it can swoop in for a meal.
Helpless to do anything but use his camera to document the event, Kevin Carter photographed the child, who was actually a boy later identified as Kong Nyong from the hamlet of Ayod, who, according to his father, actually survived the famine but died of an unrelated illness much later, in 2007.
After receiving a number of phone calls and letters from readers who wanted to know what happened to the little girl, The New York Times took a rare step and published an editor’s note describing what they knew of the situation. “The photographer reports that she recovered enough to resume her trek after the vulture was chased away. It is not known whether she reached the [feeding] center.”
The Aftermath Of The Sudan Famine Takes Its Toll On Carter
Kevin CarterAnother haunting image captured by Kevin Carter during the Sudan famine.
How Kevin Carter and the rest of the Bang-Bang Club did this kind of work day after day remains unthinkable. Of course, it took its toll on them, and in Carter’s case, fatally so.
Kevin Carter’s daily ritual included cocaine and other drug use, which would help him cope with his occupation’s horrors. He often confided in his friend Judith Matloff, a war correspondent.
She said he would “talk about the guilt of the people he couldn’t save because he photographed them as they were being killed.” It was beginning to trigger a spiral into depression. Another friend, Reedwaan Vally, says, “You could see it happening. You could see Kevin sink into a dark fugue.”
And then his best friend and fellow Bang-Bang Club member, Ken Oosterbroek, was shot and killed while on location in April 1994. Kevin Carter felt it should have been him, but he wasn’t there with the group that day because he was being interviewed about winning the Pulitzer for the vulture image.
Wikimedia CommonsNelson Mandela served 27 years in prison before assuming the presidency of South Africa in 1994.
The following month, Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa. Kevin Carter had focused his life on exposing the evils of apartheid and now, in a way, it was over. He didn’t know what to do with his life. On top of that, he felt a need to live up to the Pulitzer he’d won. Soon after, in the fog of his depression, he made a terrible mistake.
The Devastating Suicide Of Kevin Carter
Wikimedia CommonsAfter capturing the haunting image of a starving Sudanese boy being stalked by a vulture in 1993, South African photojournalist Kevin Carter took his own life.
On assignment for Time magazine, Kevin Carter traveled to Mozambique. On the return flight, he left all his film–about 16 rolls he had shot there–on the plane. It was never recovered. For Carter, this was the last straw.
Less than a week later, Kevin Carter was dead. He drove to a park, ran a hose from the exhaust pipe into his car, and died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Yes, winning the Pulitzer Prize put pressure on him, but it didn’t lead directly to his death. Rather, it only added to the pile of stress and guilt he had accumulated while documenting some of the most gruesome corners of the world. But thanks to his brain-searingly memorable photo, the famine in Sudan became internationally known. Carter left an indelible mark on the planet’s consciousness.
LightRocketKevin Carter shooting in the midst of conflict, doing what he did best.
As Kevin Carter said soon after taking the photo, “This is the ghastly image of what is happening to thousands of children,” Time quoted him as saying. “Southern Sudan is hell on earth, and the experience was the most horrifying of my career.”
After this look at Kevin Carter, see more of the most influential photos in history and learn about the horrific practice of necklacing in apartheid-era South Africa.
