Kevin Carter and The Bang Bang club.
Kevin Carter(pictured above) was a famous South African photojournalist, whose photo of a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a Vulture during the Sudanese famine of 1993 created a massive outrage worldwide.
Before getting into the photo and the bang bang club(a photographic club formed by him and his compatriots to document and exposed the pathetic conditions of Apartheid south Africa).
I’ll provide a quick summary of who he was. Kevin Carter was born in Apartheid south Africa in a“ white only neighborhood” in Johannesburg in 1960. As a child, he occasionally saw police raids to arrest Blacks who were illegally living in the area. He later said that he questions how his White “Liberal” and “Catholic” parent were complacent and lackadacikal about fighting the injustices of the Apartheid system.
He was educated at a catholic boarding school and later studied pharmacy. After dropping out due to bad grades, he joined the south African army. However, he quit the service after ill treatment. Following the church street bombing of 1983 in Pretoria, Carter decided to become a photojournalist to exposed and documents the terrible state of Apartheid south Africa marred by crime and violence.
In his early twenties, Carter team up with Ken Oosterbroek, Jaoa Silva and Greg Marinovick as photojournalist to expose the realities of Apartheid in South Africa in what became known as the Bang bang club. They went into the Black townships to record the violence there. Something no other white photographers had dared to do. A battle that changed a nation but wound up almost destroying them. Carter was the first to photograph a public execution by “Necklacing” in South Africa. A brutal method that involves putting a tyre around a person neck and setting him/ her ablaze.
They used to burned traitors and sellouts alive in Apartheid south Africa. But now the system has been adopted by those who thinks Zimbabweans and other African immigrants are the problem. Discussions for another day. In fact, even the ANC were once critized for attempting to embrace this brutal method following remarks made by Mama Winnie Mandela at a rally in Johannesburg.
In march 1993, while on a trip to Sudan during a famine in the country, he took a photo of a young, starving Sudanese child being stalked by a Vulture that shaken and shamed the world’s consciousness at the time. The photo was published by the New York times and Carter came under a barrage of criticism for falling to help the little girl. Others contacted the Newspaper to ask the fate of the girl. The paper reported that it was unclear if the girl had made it to the feeding center as it was believed the toddler was trying to reach a feeding center when a Vulture landed nearby. In his defense, Carter claim to have taken the picture because of his “Job tittle” and leaving and that he was accompanied by Sudanese security forces who wouldn’t have allowed him to run to the girls aid.
Carter won the pulitzer prize for the photo the following year. But the moment seem to have taken a huge toll on him and soon afterwards, depression started kicking in. Regarded as an ambitious man with turbulent emotions which eventually led him into despair. Though he was seriously affected by innumerable tragedies he witnessed throughout the course of his job, he never shy away from showing the society’s unspeakable cruelties to the world. On 24, July 1994, the depressed photographer committed suicide at the age of 33.
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