This is a photograph taken by a South African photojournalist, Kevin Carter. It was taken in 1993 and is of a little girl starving to death as she tried to crawl towards the food center less than a mile away. The vulture was waiting for her to die.
Carter took this photograph and left to continue on his work assignment.
He later won the Pulitzer Price in 1994 and two months later, committed suicide due to depression.
This is one of these things that make me think. After taking a photograph such as this one, would you want to intervene? If taking photographs of the harsh truth is your way to make a better world, then why not help the people you are photographing?
Well this is a tough situation because as a photojournalist, or any kind of journalist, you're suppose to document reality as it appears and not suppose to intervene with it. If you've ever watched a reality show sometimes you wonder why the cameraman doesn't stop or help if something is going wrong. They're usually suppose to let the people around take care of the situation, they're just in the background and you usually ignore them. Otherwise the audience would never see what's happening.
ReplyDeleteHowever, if this were me, taking this photograph, and there was nobody else around, of course I would try to help.