From Pulitzer Price winner Kevin Carter - a most powerful message

[chey62]

Please, go to this site and look at the picture and the message...this photo is unbelieveably powerful!

http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=10599&pst=772789&saved=1

[Korn]

It's a picture of a child in Sudan that seems to be dying, and a vulture that seems to be waiting for this to happen - a picture that shocked the world, taken three months before the photographer committed suicide. Please post some kind of warning with such pictures - it's powerful, but powerful in a way that not everybody may be always ready for.

[RedWellies]

Thanks for that, Korn. I didn't click on the link just in case it was too much for me.

[Marrers]

There was an installation about this in that church building in Brighton that has arty things in it (near Montezuma's) last year. A film piece with captions and finally showing the picture, very powerfully done.

(That caption makes it sound like he took the shot and left. The piece I saw said a lot more, including that he waited there for some time to see if the vulture would go for the child. Also about other pictures he had taken and scenes he had witnessed as a photographer.)

[Risker]

including that he waited there for some time to see if the vulture would go for the child.

How very kind of him.

[Marrers]

It's an oft heard debate isn't it - whether journalists should document what is happening or change what is happening by intervening.
They hope to change what is happening by documenting it.

[Risker]

Well, I think that in that particular case he most likely did do something about it.

I think/hope most journalists would.

[Marrers]

Well he very famously didn't do anything about it - that is part of what makes the picture so famous.

It is said that he felt so bad about that and all the other things he had seen that he killed himself soon after.

[veganavenger]

I think witnessing such horrific scenes like a fly on the wall would be too much for the vast majority of people to bear. Fortunately, there are professional photographers who do risk their own safety to bring us this kind of footage, whilst continually supressing the urge to help. If he'd banged the child straight in his Land Rover and driven him/her to the nearest aid centre, and they all lived happily ever after, it wouldn't really be a true depiction of what was really going on in Sudan, and there would be a lot of people in the West who would see that footage, and assure themselves that they don't need to bother donating money, clothes or food because there are lots of lovely photographers and aid workers there already, sorting everything out. There also wouldn't have been the same amount of publicity, had that happened. It must have been absolutely gut wrenching for him to have had to leave without helping the poor kid - but I think he undoubtedly did the right thing. Crying shame that he committed suicie.

[Purple]

Well he very famously didn't do anything about it - that is part of what makes the picture so famous.

It is said that he felt so bad about that and all the other things he had seen that he killed himself soon after.

Correct! He had no idea whether the child survived the (whatever it was, 1.5km?) crawl to the U.N. camp.

I would so have carried that child to some food though.

[Poison Ivy]

So would I....there is no way I could have walked away and left him/her to die.

[harpy]

One version of the story says he chased the vulture away. Personally I don't think that if he'd taken the child to the feeding station it would have diminished the impact of the picture at all, but as he was surrounded by famine victims I suppose it might have been difficult to save one and leave the rest :(

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981431-3,00.html

[RedWellies]

It's like the wildlife film-makers who film really sad/awful events but don't intervene. I couldn't do that but I guess it doesn't make them wrong.

[Risker]

Well he very famously didn't do anything about it - that is part of what makes the picture so famous.

It is said that he felt so bad about that and all the other things he had seen that he killed himself soon after.

That's terrible. :(