course material

1. AMEF1HDPXA Photography
Answers:
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

2. 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.
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

3. 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.
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

4. 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.

5. 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).