There's a group of 4 journalists who were bent on exposing the brutality of apartheid and , they were known as the Bang-Bang Club. This thread is about one of the photojournalists, namely Kevin Carter.

Carter was the first to photograph a public execution by "necklacing" in South Africa in the mid-1980s. The victim was Maki Skosana, who had been accused of having a relationship with a police officer. He later spoke of the images; "I was appalled at what they were doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn't necessarily such a bad thing to do."


Do you personally
think PhotoJournalists should be questioned about not taking active measures to assist the victims they may come across on the field and secondly do you think the truth worth dying for. These people continue to put their lives at risk to bring us the inside story. Does society expect them to act "humanely" on every assignment or should they be exempted as they are simply doing they're jobs by capturing photographs for the world to know the urgency of the crisis in that combat zone?

In March 1993, while on a trip to Sudan, Carter was preparing to photograph a starving toddler trying to reach a feeding center when a vulture landed nearby. Carter reported to have taken the picture, because it was his "job title", and leaving. He came under criticism for failing to help the girl.(The photograph alarmed the world of the urgency of the situation in Sudan).

Sold to the New York Times, the photograph first appeared on March 26, 1993. Hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask the fate of the girl. The paper reported that it was unknown whether she had managed to reach the feeding center. In 1994, the photograph won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography.

On 27 July 1994 Carter drove to the Braamfontein Spruit river, near the Field and Study Centre, an area where he used to play as a child, and took his own life by taping one end of a hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the passenger-side window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning, aged 33. Portions of Carter's suicide note read:

"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 [recently deceased colleague Ken Oosterbroek] if I am that lucky."

the first time i read about Kevin Carter, i couldn't get over it for a very long while, i guess giving him the pulitzer fueled his decision of suicide coupled with d critism, guilt of not being worthy of such drove him mad.

there are certain careers in life that goes beyond a job title, it actually becomes a part of ur life, photojournalism is one of them, d decisions u take at ur "job environment" can cause u ur life, the other day in Nigeria a young photojournalist who was working with Channels news tv was killed amidst one of boko haram's bomb blast in kano state, all he wanted was to give a detailed report but he lost his life at that expense, i can't really say if photojournalism is worth the risk of putting ur life in line of fire, but what i do know is that these people(journalist) are driven by the passion they have for their job, i guess that is what pushes them to the extreme. R.I.P to every one of them that has lost their lives in the call of duty.

That's true. Some careers are just too demanding. But they've left a great legacy . Even years after their work atleast their still remembered compared to everyone else.

You've got to see the movie titled Bang Bang club.