Kevin Carter took one of the historic pictures in history. The picture was clicked in 1993 and he was awarded Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994. The image took the media by storm and still remains one of the most influential photos ever taken.


The photograph is of a famine-stricken boy, who was initially believed to be a girl, starving to death with a vulture watching nearby. The picture tells a very sad story, and anyone who reads the story is sure to get his eyes wet. The tragedy portrayed by this photo goes beyond the picture itself.

 During 1993, the parts of Sudan such as Kongor, Ayud, and Waat were much affected by famine.The Hunger Triangle, a name relief organizations used in the 1990s for the area defined by the South Sudan communities Kongor, Ayod, and Waat, was dependent on UNESCO and other aid organizations to fight famine. Forty percent of the area's children under 5 years old were malnourished as of January 1993, and an estimated 10 to 13 adults died of starvation daily in Ayod alone.-[wiki]. As the condition was severe, attempts were made to make this situation over the world know about it. Photojournalists and other people were invited by Operation Lifetime Sudan to light the extreme famine problem.

In March 1993, Joao Silva and Kevin  Carter were offered to visit Sudan and report about famine and such similar problems hovering around those places. The offer was made by Robert Hadley, a former photographer and information officer for the UN Operation Lifeline Sudan at that time, in March 1993. Carter and Silva decided to go because Silva thought it would make him some kind of war photographer and for Carter, it was a way to escape "the trapped feeling". Arrangements were made for the trip and two enthusiastic photographers with their own imaginations on the mind ,set to flew away towards the poverty struck part of Sudan.

Since the problem of famine was high, there was constant fighting and blood. The new fighting in Sudan forced them to wait in Nairobi for the period of time. The next day the airplane landed in the tin hamlet of Ayod. The villagers were already waiting for food in the runaway, as Marinvoich wrote. 

Both Silva and Carter separated to take pictures of people, the mother, the children and the adults, dead or alive or of those one fighting their last battles, all victims of catastrophic famine that has arisen through the war. Carter was shocked at the situation and he informed Silva that witnessing the famine affected him emotionally. Silva, on the other side, was searching for rebel soldiers so that he could have some authority and when he found some such soldiers, Carter joined him too. Since the soldier did not speak English, it was rather difficult to communicate. One was constantly looking for Carter's watch, so Carter gave him as a gift and the soldiers became their bodyguards and followed them to their protection.

While Carter was moving towards the runaway to click more images of starvation, on his was he stopped several places to frame more of images. He came across a child lying on his face in the hot sun - he took the picture. 

Carter joined Silva in the runaway and told ""You won't believe what I've just shot! … I was shooting this kid on her knees, and then changed my angle, and suddenly there was this vulture right behind her! … And I just kept shooting – shot lots of films![12] Silva asked him where he shot the picture and was looking around to take a photo as well. Carter pointed to a place 50 m (160 ft) away. Then Carter told him that he had chased the vulture away. He told Silva he was shocked by the situation he had just photographed, saying, "I see all this, and all I can think of is Megan", his young daughter. A few minutes later they left Ayod for Kongor.[13]

In 2011, the child's father revealed the child was actually a boy, Kong Nyong, and had been taken care of by the UN food aid station. Nyong had died four years prior, c. 2007, of "fevers", according to his family.

The striking part came afterward after the story was published in the "New York Times". The image gathered a lot of criticisms, both positive and negative. People argued that he should have helped the girl in rescuing her and other congratulated him for his excellent shot. But the main story? Lies far ahead.

Carter, waited for about 20 minutes so that the Vulture would end up near the poor child and even flap it's wings so that it would be a dramatic shot. However, it did not happen and so Carter photographed the still image, chased the vulture away and ran towards the runaway. He did not help the child in any order and left the scene as it was, a hungry poor miserable child on his face, on his way to the UN feeding center. As Carter described, as the rampant situation, he did not find the situation of the girl particularly unique.

In Carter’s defense, photojournalists at that time were specifically instructed not to touch famine victims due to the possibility of spreading disease. There was little he could have done to help the girl, but it was easy to judge someone who watched and took photographs while a human being suffered. The revelation that Carter spent 20 minutes on the scene certainly didn't help his reputation. Said the St. Petersburg Times, “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.”

Still, not all of the reaction to the photo was negative. Many praised it for how powerfully and emotionally it captured the human suffering that was occurring in South Sudan. No written description of the famine could make so striking a point as this single picture. Kevin Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the photo in 1994. He took his own life shortly thereafter.[ranker]