vulture
Leah Berenson
Leah Berenson
December 6, 2023 ·  5 min read

The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photo So Emotionally Devastating, The Photographer Took His Own Life

Being alive is hard. Children, animals, the elderly, and even plants suffer. Life is extremely hard for many around the world. Similarly, sometimes moments happen that cause such great distress one wonders if they’ll ever recover. We all have heard or seen tales of poverty from countries worldwide, reminding us to be grateful for what we have. A photographer documenting the South Sudan famine in the 1990s took a Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photo entitled “The Vulture And The Little Girl.” What he witnessed was so disturbing that it eventually contributed to him taking his own life.

Famine and Hardships

In 1993 Kevin Carter and three other photographers set out to capture the suffering of the Sudanese people. During apartheid, the country and its people saw deep suffering. Just before and during the harvest of 1990, international and UN agencies warned of a coming poor harvest and food shortage that would last from 1990 to 1991. The fear was that there would be a repeat of the famine that occurred in 1984. During this famine, there is an estimated death toll in the hundreds of thousands. Fortunately, the 1990-1991 famine fell short of this; however, deaths due to and related to starvation still reached the thousands.

The Vulture and the Little Girl
The Vulture and the Little Girl (1993). Image Credit: Kevin Carter | New York Times

Capturing “The Struggling Girl

Carter and fellow photographers referred to as the “Bang-Bang Club” have received so much attention for their works. Subsequently, they have been nominated and won countless awards, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Kevin Cater’s photo, The Vulture and the Little Girl. The photo’s title is actually misleading because it turns out the child in the photo is a boy. Nevertheless, the photo is both devastating and moving.

The Vulture and the Little Girl, also referred to as “The Struggling Girl,” first appeared in the New York Times in 1993. The powerful photo invoked a range of emotions, some were outraged. Meanwhile, others were overwhelmed by sadness or compassion. Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the photo that same year. The image depicts a small struggling child with a vulture in the background stalking” the child, waiting for (hoping) the child will starve to death. In the photo, it is clear to see the child’s emaciated body, highlighting the hardships of the people of South Sudan.

The Vulture and The Girl Bring” Turmoil

Carter, as well as the New York Times, got a great deal of backlash from people wondering why he hadn’t stepped up to help the child in the picture. Carter spoke about the events saying that he watched the scene for around 20 minutes, hoping the vulture would leave. It never did, so he snapped the shot and chased the bird away. It is unknown if or how the child made it to the feeding center. However, about 14 years later, the child passed away from malarial fever. Famine, poverty, and unsanitary conditions are not unusual in African countries, particularly South Sudan.

So, what led the photographer of “The Vulture and the Little Girl” to end his own life? Firstly, it’s important to note the African roots within Cater. He was born in 1960, to English immigrants in a suburb of Johannesburg. Despite their family ancestry, Carter and his family were not part of the Afrikaner mainstream that ruled the country when he was growing up. Carter loved his parents but felt that his childhood wasn’t a happy one. At that time, segregation between whites and blacks was so intense that government officials ruled with an iron fist. “Well-armed government security forces used excessive firepower. The chaotic hand-to-hand street fighting between black factions involved AK-47s, spears, and axes.”

Calling it Quits

After the New York Times bought the iconic photo entitled, also called “The Suffering Girl,” Carter quit and became a freelance photojournalist. Over time his pictures were used on the covers of magazines worldwide. They always highlighted worldly struggles and brought attention to the hardships of poverty and living in dangerous conditions. Carter battled with depression his whole life.

“I had to think visually,” he said once, describing a shoot-out. “I am zooming in on a tight shot of the dead guy and a splash of red. Going into his khaki uniform in a pool of blood in the sand. The dead man’s face is slightly gray. You are making a visual here. But inside something is screaming, ‘My God.’ But it is time to work,” Carter explains of the bittersweet life of a photojournalist.

The Night’s Events Unfold

On the night of June 27th, 1994, Carter backed his red Nissan up to a blue gum tree nearby the field and study center not far from Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. His suicide attempt occurred around 9 P.M. Despite the Sandton Bird Club having their monthly meeting, no one noted Carter. He used silver gaffer tape, attaching a garden hose to the exhaust pipe of his truck. Carter, wearing unwashed Lee jeans and an Esquire T-shirt, got into the vehicle and turned it on. He put on his Walkman and lied on his side using a knapsack as a pillow. Cater left behind a suicide note. The note was short and to the point, but what he didn’t say, said it all.

Carter wrote of coming home from New York, he was “depressed . . . without phone . . . money for rent . . . money for child support . . . money for debts . . . money!!! . . . 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 . . . “ Carter ends his message to the world with, “I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.” For those who may be wondering, Ken was another member of the Bang-Bang Club and was shot to death on April 18th, 1994.

The Vulture and the Little Girl is just one of many obvious signs that people who create often find their motivation from deep pain or suffering. Painters, Photographers, Singers, Etc., essentially those who create for a living or as a passion, are often filled with pain. There’s a darkness inside of them, and they see that in the world. Their expression is often a great source to highlight the inner and outer struggles of people’s pain worldwide.

Keep Reading: A Photographer Captured The Last Images of Kenya’s ‘Elephant Queen’ Just Before Her Death

Source

  1. A Pulitzer-winning photographer’s suicide.” NPR. March 2, 2006.