Picture Exercise (Kevin Carter)

The vulture and little girl by Kevin Carter, 1993

This photograph of a vulture waiting for a girl to die and to eat her was taken by South African photojournalist, Kevin Carter. The photo above shows the state of the children living in South Africa. There is not enough food there and the children are starving to death at an alarming rate, that even vultures know that the children will die soon and that they can eat them then. Kevin Carter, however, chose not to react to the situation by helping the little girl. Instead, he simply took a photo of this pitiful scene. There were many nasty remarks from netizens, causing Kevin to feel immense guilt which resulted in his suicide after 3 months. We feel that those netizens should not have made those nasty remarks without concrete evidence. Kevin did not intervene despite how pitiful the scene was, hence he must have felt immense guilt for not helping. Though as a photojournalist, he was not to step for fear of contracting disease. However, if you look at it in another perspective, he had helped in a way. With the publicity the photo got, he had created awareness throughout the world, about the state of the malnourished children living in South Africa.