Kevin Carter: Sudan Famine

Photographer: Kevin Carter

This Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Kevin Carter captured the attention of the world by tragically photographing the desperation that famine was causing in the Sudan. It was first published in The New York Times and The Mail & Guardian, a Johannesburg weekly newspaper.

Carter was born in South Africa and was exposed, at a young age, to the social injustices that the apartheid created. As he became older, he became increasingly alarmed by the lack of action or indifference by “decent” men and women. This had a profound effect on his life and led him to pursue a career in photojournalism. He spent much of his professional career photographing social injustices and emergencies.

During his time-off in 1994, Carter payed his way to photograph the famine in the Sudan. He hoped his photographs could raise global awareness to the desperation in Africa, a under-represented geographic location. He was traveling with the U.N. when this photograph was taken of a child waiting for her mother to return back from the U.N. food tent.

After this photograph became widely circulated, Carter received harsh criticism from some who thought he could have done more and his responsibility to mankind outweighed his duty to photograph the famine. In his defense, there was not much he could have done, as the U.N. was visiting many locations to drop off food and could not have stayed to see if the child survived. Regardless, the horrors he experienced during his life as a photojournalist caused him to take his own life shortly after he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. "Kevin always carried around the horror of the work he did," his father, Jimmy Carter, told the South African Press Association.

This photograph has had such a big impact primarily because it symbolized the despair of an entire continent. It became more than a heart-wrenching image of a starving child; it represented the atrocities that were occurring daily in villages across Africa. Many people were unaware just how dismal life is for some children in Africa. The vulture in the background seemingly waiting for the child to die, represented the urgency of Carter's message. This photo was meant to be shocking and alarming as it was necessary to facilitate immediate action from the world.