article anglais

« EVA GINOT 1ere ES1 FOOD CRISIS, 1993 Photo by Kevin CARTER. This photo was taken in Sudan, March 1993 by photographer Kevin Carter. We see a child visibly exhausted, lying on the ground, defeated by hunger.

The idea that he is living his last moments is reinforced by the threatening presence of a vulture, these raptors sniffing the death to come. This picture is an income of famine in Africa. The 32-year-old photojournalist travels to Sudan armed with his only camera, determined to see more clearly the reasons for the famine and civil war in the country. As he travels to a village in southern Sudan, he comes across a child with hunger-deformed flesh agonizing under a blazing sun.

The image is already unbearable in itself, but soon a scavenger comes to rest behind it.

The photographer holds there a powerful image, symbol of all the horror of the Sudanese situation.

Patient, he waits for the vulture to spread its wings to give even more impact to its cliché.

In vain.

After a good half-hour of waiting, he leaves the premises, his eyes filled with tears. This frightful spectacle has changed his vision of the World forever.

It is a horrible image that has given people real respect for the disastrous living conditions in sub-Saharan Africa. The image provokes emotion, of course, but also the polemic of the media. What happened to the child in the picture? Has the photographer done any action to help him? Thousands of readers write to the newspaper to express their indignation.

So much so that an editorial is published shortly afterwards to explain that the child, as far as they know, was able to return to a refugee camp. Anyway, Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer Prize the following year thanks to his photo. Happiness? No, not really ...

Ruined, debt-stricken, addicted to drugs and especially tormented by all the horrors he witnessed during his various missions in Africa, Kevin Carter is no more than the shadow of himself. On July 27, 1994, he killed himself in his car and left a simple word to explain his gesture. The small child would have survived the famine but would have died some fifteen years later of malaria. I chose this picture (from 1993) because it is striking. She is strong, menacing.

It fills us with uneasiness. When you see this child, who is about to die, just keep fighting to not serve dessert to the vultures. Desired view desperately help this child. I think it was very difficult for the photographer to take this picture without being able to intervene. This image changes our vision of the world forever, so we get back into questions.. »