The Vulture And The Little Girl: A Powerful Photograph Of The Sudanese Famine

The Photograph and its Impact

The photograph that is going to be discussed here is The Vulture and the Little Girl. This photograph is also known as The Struggling Girl, which was taken by Kevin Carter. This had appeared in the New York Times on March 26 1993. Is it a picture of a frail and weak famine stricken boy who was first believed to be a girl. He had collapsed on the ground with a vulture eyeing him. He was trying to reach the United Nations Feeding centre in Ayod, which is in Sudan. He had survived.  This paper is going to see the point of view of two critics named Cat Witko and Stephen Roget.

In 1994, Kevin Carter submitted this photo, which was taken during the civil war in Sudan. He did not have any idea at that moment that he would win the Pulitzer Prize. He also succumbed into depression after winning the prize. This photograph had showed the whole world the tragedy that had befallen Sudan. It had broken the main complacency, which was existing among the people who were sheltered from those struggles. It was a very desperate call to action to help the people in the world who genuinely needed it. According to Cat, the country always had a budget deficit and was in a huge national debt. In the early colonizing years, the British had decided to slow down the industrialization efforts of Sudan. This was the reason of famine in the country and the country was left into a lot of debt. The United Nations had already started to help the country by giving food stations and teach the citizens to grow crops and increase the economy. Even so, carter had published this photograph to the new York Times to show the people that enough efforts were not being made. This paper also talks about how the photograph had cast an uneasy perspective on the problems that Sudan was going through and it was confrontational because it had addressed the biggest crisis, which was poverty. This picture showed a young boy who was starving and he was trying his best to go to the feeding centre of the UN. There are several subtle messages in the photo that make it a very powerful message for the world. According to this paper, the photograph shows the story and the fate of the child as well as the photographer. Philosopher Stephen Toulmin had given proper strategies as well as language to use and also to understand how the picture or a text operated on the minds of the readers and the viewers. For instance, warrants are the instances in which an artist constructed an image to give appeal to the viewer’s values, beliefs, biases and cultural predispositions. The main warrant in this picture was that the children in Sudan were starving. This mixture of the complex and critical messages created a strong sense of pathos and affected the emotional side of the viewer. This pathos in turn, caused a lot of pain and anguish to the viewers and they felt the obligation to create different ways to help the people who were suffering in Sudan.

The Perspectives of Critics

Unfortunately, Carter had taken his own life after three months of publishing the photo and getting the Pulitzer Prize. The death of carter was speculated to have been the result of either of the two things ; the first could be that he could not bear the fame that he was getting and the criticism that he was getting for clicking the picture. The second could be that he could not bear the guilt of not helping the child. In a Time magazine article after Carter’s death, the article relayed the guilt that he had felt and how even some of his friends wondered why he had not helped the child. There is also a speculation that he could not help the child because there were militia everywhere and there were strict rules and restrictions on interacting with the people of Sudan, he was surrounded by the military when he went there.

When the newspaper published the photograph, they knew the impact the photo would have on the viewers. The photographer and the publisher knew that the audience would find it disturbing. The photograph was tragic but it was more horrifying because it was a picture of a reality, which was being faced by several people.  The main aim of the photo was to bring more people into the forefront and show them the reality so that there were more of humanitarian help and work. Even so, the photograph rendered criticism. There was an article, which had retold the incidents that were told by Carte. This article has extensively researched about the criticisms and the incidents of the photograph. This paper also reiterated the accounts of the photographer and how he had taken the picture. This paper has also written about the professional detachment that he had even after seeing the scenario. This paper criticised Carter and wrote that he ignored his responsibility to help the child. This decision would have a lasting impression and effect on the world. This article also reiterated how the photograph and the death of Carter were both related to the melancholy and devastating aspect of the world. There will always be speculation on why Carter passed away the manner in which he did and people take a guess, which is always related to the picture. This paper criticises the certain aspects of his responsibility after taking the photograph but it also talks about the impact that the publishing of the picture had on the world.  This paper gives a lot of research into the incident and shows the different facets of the photograph.

The picture did have a lot of impact on the world and in the life of the photographer because he felt guilty of not helping the child. This changed many things in the world and in his own life. This photograph is still relevant and is changing the viewpoints of the people about the sufferings of the world and how media uses it.

The next article was published in Ranker.com and it was written by Stephan Roget. Here it was written that several people are already familiar with the picture of the South Sudan famine but very few people knew that the tragedy had reached an area which was far beyond than the picture. It had extended to the life of the photographer as well. The photo was of a starving Sudanese boy who was struggling to reach the UN Food Centre and the child was being watched by a vulture. This photograph has given a very hard ranging subtext but the details which were leading up to the events of the image have become the symbolism for the most heart-breaking and the most complex story of human suffering in the modern era. When the picture had first been published in the New York Times it had given a huge firestorm of criticism that included both condemnation as well as appreciation for Carter.    Carter could not process and bear the horrors that he had seen in Sudan and this had added another led to the tragic photograph taken by him. This article also reached the fact that Carter had admitted that he had watched the whole scene for about 20 minutes and had waited for the vulture to get closer to the boy and spread its wings for a far more dramatic picture. He also admitted the fact that after the vulture had refused to move Carter had finally chased the bird away from the child. The article also reiterated the fact that the famine in South Sudan was extremely devastating and very appalling. The country was completely got into a famine throughout the 1990s. The mortality rate in South Sudan had hit a very high level especially during the time Carter had taken the photograph. The readers had become very agitated after seeing a photograph in the New York Times and people had also crowded in front of the office to enquire about whether or not the child had survived. Photo journalists in the country of South Sudan at that particular time were instructed to not touch famine victims due to the possibility of the disease spread. The defendant of Carter had argued the fact that because of these strict instructions he could not help the child but critics just him even after that. This article does not take the sight of either the critics or the photographer and does not criticise the photographer but only gives the proper information that were found from this incident. This article also writes about the fact that there was both criticism and praise for the photographer and several people had praised the power as well as the emotion, which was captured within the photograph. The photograph also helped people become more aware about the incidents and the state of South Sudan and what people were going through that country so that the people of the world would help in any form of manner. This article also reiterated the fact that Carter had left a note after he taken his own life and he had cited the facts of debt and struggled with depression as the main reasons for his decision and also the fact that his career was filled with the trauma of him capturing images which were only about suffering.

The Responsibility of the Media

This article also talked about the second Sudan civil war which had started in 1983 and was still in full progress when Carter had taken the Pulitzer prize-winning Photo. This had made the relief efforts and the ability of starving people to reach it more complex. Therefore, the whole scenario of the picture and the incidents, which followed up the picture, were also very complex because the photographer also could not be directly blamed for what happened. The criticisms that he had to face were not completely right because he had been seen to have many restrictions from the military while he was trying to help the child.

This photograph was one of the most controversial images that was taken in the history of photojournalism. The main incident was the fact that the parents of the children of that boy were busy taking food from the plane and they had left the child very briefly while they were collecting their food. This was when the vulture had landed in front of the child. The aspect of criticism, which was negative, was a big impact for both the photograph and the career of the photographer. Carter was bombarded with several forms of questions about why he did not approach and help the child and only took her photograph. Everybody accused him of being a predator and being the other vulture in the scene. The public opinion was very condemning and the public was not happy with the picture and pretty size the fact that instead of taking a picture the photographer could have helped the child afterwards. Carter had also expressed a lot of regret that he had not done anything to help the child even though he was restricted from doing anything in that time. This photograph not only shows the suffering of the people in Sudan due to the famine and the suffering people have gone through because of colonisation, but it also shows the toll and the pressure that a photo journalist has to take when they are taking pictures of suffering and they are helpless because they are restricted from helping the people. It is very traumatising for the photographer as well as the people were view in the picture and therefore the criticism towards the photographer should not be negative. Carter had captured several instances of human suffering, which had taken a psychological toll on his mind. Carter had also reiterated in several interviews that even when his human emotional side was screaming to him that the pictures of suffering were organising still you have to remember that he was working and he had to deal with the emotions later.

These aspects in both the articles show that the photographer could not be blamed alone because it was his job to take the photos of suffering of the people even if he did not want to do it. They were both positive and negative criticisms related to the picture that made him win the Pulitzer prize but he had to take the picture and that came with another form of a price that he had to pay. It was commendable of the photographer to click that picture because the picture made the viewer far more aware about what was going on in the third world countries and what Sudan was going through so that the people could contribute their own help towards the country but there was also a lot of criticism that the photographer had to face. This picture highlighted the civil war that was going on in South Sudan, which many viewers might not have even known. The grim civil war had gone for almost 10 years and the government of the north which wanted any stormy country was fighting non-Muslim rebels in the south. The people of the south have always been oppressed by the north and the recent Arab cultures rule over the traditional African ways has increased. There have also been incidents where the southern rebels have turned against each other. These articles show that the picture was not only a device stating story about Sudan but it was also devastating story of every single photo journalist who had to take pictures of human suffering when they might have wanted to help the humans over suffering. This photograph not only shows the suffering inside the frame of the photograph but the worldwide repercussions of colonisation as well as famines and how media uses these aspects to trigger the viewers into doing something about the haunting images.

Therefore, The image is extremely powerful and raises a lot of ethical and moral questions about the role of a photojournalist. Even to this day people question what is the job of a photojournalist should actually be and the question whether the photojournalist should only document the incident or intervene into the incident. The criticisms have always arrived against the photographer because he had only shooed away the vulture and not taken any other step to help the child. It was written in 1994 article in Florida is Saint Petersburg that “the man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a creditor another vulture on the scene.” These different aspects show that people have different forms of moral values and stereotypes and the picture has triggered these different forms of values and norms in the people of the world and made them help the people who are in need or just sit and criticise the photographer without doing anything about it. This picture not only gives the scenario of human suffering but it also gives the scenario of the person who captures the image of the human suffering and what they must be going through mentally.

References

• Roget, S. The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Photo So Emotionally Devastating, The Photographer Took His Own Life.
• https://www.ranker.com/list/vulture-and-little-girl-photo-story/stephanroget (accessed Jan 10, 2022).
• Witko,C.https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1098&context=evision (accessed Jan 10, 2022).
• Geurts, M. The Atrocity of Representing Atrocity - Watching Kevin Carter's 'Struggling Girl'.
• https://aestheticinvestigations.eu/index.php/journal/article/view/50 (accessed Jan 10, 2022).