[dovate.com] » What’s the Value?
What’s the Value?
The photo:
A starving Sudanese girl who collapsed on her way to a feeding center while a vulture waited nearby. Won the Pulitzer Prize, 1994.
The photographer:
Kevin Carter. On another set of photographs was quoted: “I was appalled at what they were doing. 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.”
Criticism:
“The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene.”
In his suicide note, 13 months later:
“I’m really, really sorry… The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist… I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain . . . of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners . . . ”
Comment:
The photo makes us all witnesses and vultures aren’t predators.
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2 Comments
1. HIROHITO99 replies at 27th November 2007, 7:07 pm :
Wow… thanks for making me hate my day just a little more.
2. abbey replies at 30th November 2007, 3:10 am :
I feel journalististic photographers are necessary and have an important function, how much of history would not be believed without their efforts. We are a species who seem to need to see to believe….Australia has many great war photographers…whose role has been to record and stay objective
The above shot??, what would of been gained if he had not taken the photo…nothing, but by taking it and raising awareness, then change may be instigated
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