Humanitarian
There’s a photo that I’ve been meaning to share, and yet am hesitant to do so: one, because it’s triggery; and two, because it is a stark departure from the usual warm-and-fuzzy holiday entries being featured this month. It keeps calling out to me to blog about it, regardless. I think it’s important.
The rest of the entry is cut-tagged for emotional triggers.
Photo by Kevin Carter
I remember reading about this photo a few years back, and recently tripped across it a couple days ago. It features a little Sudanese girl, severely emeciated, propped up on knees and elbows and unable to hold up her own weight from the dusty ground, and a vulture that has landed a few paces behind her.
That image is horrific enough, but imagine the photographer who took that image. A man named Kevin Carter, already known in the field for his years of journalistic photography in Africa highlighting the cruelty of humans against themselves, was standing not far from a center where food was being given out by some charitable organization, to the population in the area. This photographer heard a soft mewling behind him, and turned to see this little girl, alone, crawling with all her feeble strength towards the center. He would say later that he spent twenty minutes photographing her as she lay still, gathering her strength to begin again. The vulture was already there, standing patiently, waiting. After he’d had his session, he shooed the bird away, and left the girl to her goal. He won a Pulitzer Prize for that photo, which defined his career. A couple of months after, he committed suicide.
Of the man, he was horrified at what he saw through his photo lens, and sought to bring worldwide attention to the human suffering he witnessed. This photo in particular was surrounded in much controversy–critics cried out, “Why did you not put down the camera and pick up and carry that girl to the center?” People who defend the man say that the girl’s parents were just ahead of her, already at the center. Surely she survived that day, that she was cared for and not alone.
Of the girl, nothing is known. Her name, her age, her story. We only know that she was alive at the time this photo was taken. Did she make it to the center? Did she have family to take care of her? Did the vulture return? The photo only provides questions, no answers. The only answers come from the photographer, and from others who dissect his words trying to glean the truth.
Here I sit in a warm condo with a view of the city and the river and the night sky, wishing I had enough money for tires for my car, wondering what I’ll cook for dinner tonight. There are so many other people, in this country, in neighboring countries, in places all over the world, rural communities and big cities, where people don’t have a warm room and an internet connection, who don’t have a car, who don’t have clothes much less food.
I don’t know about you but sometimes I need a slap in the face to gain perspective about my situation and my life, and take inventory in what I have, not in what I do not have. What excuse have I to be bummed about anything, when I have most immediate creature comforts covered? I like clue-by-fours.
The photographer committed suicide because he became so distraught about his own problems, and was haunted by what he’d seen over the years in his career. The camera is an impersonal object and tool, but the person behind it is not. You cannot unsee what you have seen. And he chose that life. I have much respect for him.
But I do wish he had put the camera down and carried that little girl to her destination. There comes a point that life calls out to you to stop what you are doing, and to become active in what is happening around you. If you are not solving the problem, you may not be contributing to it, but you may be criticized for not stepping outside your comfort zone and stepping up to do what should be innate and natural, and moral.
Yes, there are many hungry, needy people out there. You need not help them all, but give a moment of your time. Donate to a charity. Give your spare change to the tip jar or the penny jar at the pub or the grocery store. Volunteer to read stories to children, or to serve meals to those who need it. Give something of yourself, if you have not already.
I did not mean for this to become preachy, I am talking to myself as much as to anyone else. I will be taking my own advice.
