Assignment 4- Colton Warner

(http://all-that-is-interesting.com/kevin-carter)

This photograph stood out to me the first time I saw it. I want to stop looking, but I feel like I should keep looking. It is cruel and disgusting but necessary.

On a trip to Sudan in March 1993, Kevin Carter documented a starving toddler supposedly trying to make her way to a feeding center when a vulture lands by her. Carter says he took the photo, chased away the vulture then left. It gained immense press after being sold to the New York Times and spread across the world news.

Seeing a vulture preying on a human being is startling and eye-opening. It is so easy to neglect the horrible things happening in the world when you don't have to see them every day. While the Sudanese famine took place in the 90's, starvation is still prevalent throughout the world, and I like how this photo brings such a sense of struggle and morbidity in starving areas. The fact that a vulture is looking at this alien human reminds me how lucky people are in the first world. Everyone (or almost everyone) in the United States got lucky in a birthing lottery to not be born in these conditions. It simultaneously makes me grateful for what I have and also desiring to help those struggling.

Kevin Carter after winning a Pulitzer prize for this image the year before, committed suicide in 1994.