A new chapter in viral Facebook outrage is the hysteria over the photojournalist Kevin Carter and his suicide (July 1994) presumably stemming from guilt over a Pulitzer winning image he captured in March 1993.
He was in Sudan. He came upon a tiny girl crawling towards food aid, a vulture waiting in the wings to prey on her in case she died. Rumor has it that he waited 20 minutes hoping to get the perfect image (vulture spreading its wings) before he gave up on that, took this image, shooed the vulture away and then left.
I'm not going to post the image here, but you can either Google-image for Kevin Carter Vulture Photo or look through this website from a documentary about him.
I think of photojournalism as work where the photographer is as invisible as possible, causes minimal disruption in the image and doesn't manipulate the image content. So if I adjust a bride's veil or ask your kids to run towards something or give their mama a hug, I'm not a true photojournalist. Further, in the kind of photography I do, I never have to make life altering choices. But as a field photojournalist, a lot of what you see is something you don't want to see, something you might be able to stop (in a limited scope). So will you capture the moment or interrupt it?
Many comments in response to this image on Facebook were in the vein of why Carter's suicide was a fitting end because the photographer (1) just sat there like a human vulture (2) didn't make sure the girl got to the food. I recall feeling similar emotions while watching the movie Winged Migration (which I highly recommend). I was full of horror that they just sat there filming crabs eating a sick bird and other such morbid realities that nature is full of. I was so relieved when I read that the filmmakers intervened and didn't let the bird die.
I do think it takes a certain amount of detachment to be able to take the image Carter did. But if nobody took those images, would we know what war was? Real photojournalism, like real journalism, is often the wake up call we all need. But nothing prevents us from taking a minute after getting our stunning image, to see if we can help in any way. Right? Wrong?
I took a CPR class a few months ago. At the end of the class, the instructor (a firefighter) asked us what we would do if we saw a man in dirty, worn clothes, fallen on a street in downtown, in need of CPR. Less than half the class said they would do mouth to mouth, while most said they would do the heart-pumping part of it. Some said they would simply call 911 and wait till help arrived. If a large section of the population doesn't want to stick their mouths on a dying man, why would someone stick his hands on a dying girl? Or, if dying, crawling children were all you saw, every day, would the sight of one more move you to do something?
Sure, I have a judgmental response somewhere in my mind, but nothing that says suicide was a fitting end.
Further Reading: The Life and Death of Kevin Carter (on Time.com)
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