I’ve always had an interest in photography. I still remember going to the Isle of White with school when I was around 8. When we got back and had to write about our trip my written work was shite but my pictures won me a prize, a Toblerone I seem to recall and so started my addiction to sweet chocolatey, nougat, loveliness but we’ll leave that. After that I was always stopped by photography in magazines and books, of anything really, landscapes, portraits ect.
Images really started to have a strong resonance on me when I saw Kevin Carter’s image of the tiny Sudanese girl resting as she walked to a feeding station, emaciated, a vulture lands and follows close behind, waiting in anticipation for her to die. In 1994 Kevin Carter, who was part of the Bang-Bang Club, four best mate photographers who were in South Africa during the Apartheid and black on black violence, won the Pulitzer Prize for his picture. After the award Carter came under huge criticism for not helping the girl and in effect being as bad as the vulture. By this time two of his mates in the Bang-Bang Club had been killed photographing the trouble in South Africa, and Cater was a drug addict, the only escape from the suffering he’d seen and losing his friends.
In July of 1994 Kevin Carter committed suicide.
Kevin Carter doing what he did best
REFERENCES
http://www.pulitzer.org/
http://www.thisisyesterday.com/ints/KCarter.html
Aldo take a look at Susan Sontag - On Photography - the first chapter In Plato Cave -(also a handout)
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