Kevin Carter dan The Vulture Picture(1993)

Aku ada hobi baru ;Fotografi.

Semuanya bermula bila aku menonton filem Dokumentari bertajuk Genius of Photography terbitan BBC. Dokumentari selama 6 jam.

Tapi tak semua the best shot of photography ada dalam dokumentari itu.ya ianya bercerita tentang Magnum, Man Ray, Japanese Photography, Post War Photography and Post Modern photography, namun begitu ada satu photograpy yang ia terlepas dari huraian doku tersebut. Photo yang mengejutkan dunia. Photo yang menang Pulitzer tahun 1994. photography yang bagi aku beyond words; kesan, implikasi, effect dan proses itself...is beyond words. Satu photo yang mempersoalkan tentang humaniti lebih dari yang boleh kita bangktikan.

Gambar ini dirakam oleh Kevin carter, seorang jurufoto dari Afrika Selatan dalam kumpulang bang bang club. Sebelum ini kevin Carter sudah dulu terkenal kerana memaparkan kekejaman apartheid yang menghukum pesalah negro dengan teknik necklacing.

namun begitu photography yang membuatkan Kevin Carter terkenal adalah The Vulture Picture.

Ini adalah rentetan dari peristiwa tersebut yang berlaku pada Mac 1993;

In March 1993 Carter made a trip to southern Sudan. The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to an emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, whereupon a vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn't. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the little girl:
"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."

The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run a special editor's note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown."

Tiada siapa yang tahu nasib bayi perempuan itu. Its very likely dia dimakan oleh burung Vulture tersebut. who knows. Not even Kevin carter. But thats what makes this fotography so horrifying.the fate of man (child) in the hands of the nature (vulture)

On April 2, 1994 Nancy Buirski, a foreign New York Times picture editor, phoned Carter to inform him he had won the most coveted prize for photojournalism. Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography on May 23, 1994 at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library. (sumber wikipedia , apa lagi)

Ini pula versi sahabatnya, Joao Silva tentang apa sebenar yangberlaku pada hari itu.
Again according to Silva, Carter was quite shocked as it was the first time that he had seen a famine situation and so he took many shots of the children suffering from famine. Silva also started to take photos of children on the ground as if crying, which were not published. The parents of the children were busy taking food from the plane so they had left their children only briefly while they collected the food. This was the situation for the girl in the photo taken by Carter. A vulture landed behind the girl. To get the two in focus, Carter approached the scene very slowly so as not to scare the vulture away and took a photo from approximately 10 metres. He took a few more photos and then the vulture flew off.

Pada 27 Julai 1994, Kevin carter gassed himself to death.
For some it’s the effect of the picture. The same picture that make him famous is the same that kills him.

Ini sebahagian dari nota bunuh dirinya;
"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

.Tiada siapa tahu nasib bayi itu ditangan burung ereng itu. Tidak juga Kevin Carter. So far I dont have any more horrifying than this photography. It question man's (and in this case its the baby) fate in the hands of nature. God bless us all.

Does picture have to be this shocking to have its full impact on us?