Kevin Carter

"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky." -Found with the body of Kevin Carter

It was a warm, sunny day in South Africa. The noonday sun was shining mercilessly. Kevin Carter was hazy and sleep deprived. He had not slept for 2 days. Every time he tried he envisioned the things he saw and documented. Every time he tried to go to sleep he saw his baby son, playing on a playground many African children had ever seen. Kevin was parked in his truck by the spot where he himself played as a child, away from the poverty he saw.

He did nothing, he thought to himself. He had done nothing. No change had come about because of his life-long work. He had won a Pulitzer Prize, but not anything truly importantly had come about. He had been criticized by many, "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."

He breathed heavily as he felt the carbon monoxide in his lungs.


There she was. Just lying there. A lonely girl, malnourished, despite the technology, innovation and surplus of the Western world, elbows protecting her face, scarred by horrors, everyday things where she was from, that no American had ever seen before. Her ribs were well defined, with no clothes or protection from the hot sun. Her eyes conveyed the deepest emotions of desperation and isolation. A starvation not even a nearby village could solve, as the harvest that year failed. The famine waged its seemingly endless war on the villagers, while the foreign aid reinforcements did little in their quagmire of red tape, corruption and greed.

The vulture sat there; waiting, watching. Its eyes were solely focused on the eventual prey that sat, cowered in fear before it. It could wait.

All he had was water, a notebook and pens, a map and compass, and his photographer’s kit. With these objects, he had hoped to help end poverty. All of this was captured in thousands of vivid colors showing the striking, thought-provoking scene. “This one image,” Kevin said aloud to himself, “could help save the world from the plague of poverty.”

He breathed heavily as he felt the carbon monoxide in his lungs.