* Things you should be listening for and thinking about: How does Kevin Carter's dilemma relate to our unit theme of power? Did he make the right choice taking the photograph? Should he have attempted to save the child and not show the world the horrors of hunger in Africa? Did Kevin Carter feel responsible? How do we evaluate our own decision making and responsibility? And, when we make decisions, do we accept responsibility?
How can you use this discussion and your notes about Kevin Carter to help you write about power and responsibility? Is there any relationship to Holocaust or Milgram articles?
*IF YOU TRULY THINK ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS AND TRY TO MAKE CONNECTIONS YOU WILL BECAME A BETTER READER AND WRITER.
Kevin Carter:
The Consequences of Photojournalism
|
||||
In 1994, South African photojournalist
Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer prize for his disturbing photograph of a
Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture. That same year, Kevin Carter
committed suicide.
Without the facts surrounding his death, this behavior may seem surprising. But Carter received heaps of criticism for his actions. While in Sudan, near the village of Ayod, Carter found a small, emaciated toddler struggling to make her way to the food station. When she stopped to rest, a vulture landed nearby with his eyes on the little girl. Carter took twenty minutes to take the photo, wanting the best shot possible, before chasing the bird away. The photo was published in The New York Times in March of 1993, and sparked a wide reaction. People wanted to know what happened the child, and if Carter had assisted her. The Times issued a statement saying that the girl was able to make it to the food station, but beyond that no one knows what happened to her. Because of this, Carter was bombarded with questions about why he did not help the girl, and only used her to take a photograph. The St. Petersburg Times in Florida said this of Carter: "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." Filmmaker Dan Krauss said, "In his famous picture of the vulture stalking the Sudanese girl, I began to see the embodiment of his troubled psyche. I believe Kevin did, too. In the starving child, he saw Africa's suffering; in the preying vulture, he saw his own face." Carter's daughter Megan responded to such comparisons with, "I see my dad as the suffering child. And the rest of the world is the vulture."
Carter is
the tragic example of the toll photographing such suffering can take on a
person.
Carter's
suicide is not a direct result of the Sudanese child, nor the accusations
that he staged the scene, or criticisms that he did not assist her. Carter
had spiraled into a depression, to which many things were a factor, his
vocation as a photojournalist in 1980s Africa definitely a large part of it.
Excerpts from Carter's suicide note read: "I'm really, really sorry. The
pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not
exist...depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child
support ... money for debts ... money! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories
of killings & corpses & anger & 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."
|
On August 5, 1945, Tibbets formally named
B-29 serial number 44-86292 Enola Gay after his mother. On
August 6, the Enola Gay departed Tinian Island in the Marianas at 02:45 for Hiroshima, Japan with Tibbets at the
controls. Tinian was approximately 2000
miles away from Japan, so it took six hours to reach Hiroshima. Because of the
fear that the Japanese could have captured the plane, twelve cyanide pills were
kept in the cockpit; in case of the failure of the mission, the pilots were
supposed to use them. The atomic bomb, code-named "Little Boy", was dropped over
Hiroshima at 8:15 local time. When the A-bomb was dropped on the city, Tibbets
recalls that the city was covered with a tall mushroom cloud.[7]
In
1946, the Manhattan Engineer District published a study that concluded that 66,000 people were killed at
Hiroshima out of a population of 255,000. Of that number, 45,000 died on
the first day and 19,000 during the next four months. In addition,
"several hundred" survivors were expected to die from
radiation-induced cancers and lukemia over the next 30 years.
Aftermath
When Colonel Tibbets had accomplished his
mission, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (United States) immediately after
landing in Guam. His photos started to appear on the front pages of
all American and world newspapers. He became a very popular person in the
United States; pictures and interviews of his wife and children were printed in
the main American newspapers. Colonel Tibbets was seen as a national hero who
ended the war with Japan. There were, however, no parades or testimonial
dinners for him or any of the other Enola Gay crewmen.
Tibbets was interviewed extensively by
Mike Harden of the Columbus Dispatch, and profiles appeared
in the newspaper on anniversaries of the first dropping of an atomic bomb. In a
1975 interview he said: "I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing,
plan it, and have it work as perfectly as it did .... I sleep clearly every
night."[9]
In the 2005 BBC premier, Hiroshima: BBC History of World War II, Tibbets recalled the
day of the Hiroshima bombing. When the bomb had hit its target, he was
relieved. Tibbets stressed in the interview, "I'm not emotional. I didn't
have the first Goddamned thought, or I would have told you what it was. I did
the job and I was so relieved that it was successful, you can't even understand
it."[10]
Later life
The U.S. government apologized to Japan in 1976 after Tibbets re-enacted the
bombing in a restored B-29 at an air show in Texas, complete with mushroom cloud. Tibbets said that he
had not meant for the reenactment to have been an insult to the Japanese.[9] In 1995, he denounced
the 50th anniversary exhibition of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian
Institution,
which attempted to present the bombing in context with the destruction it
caused, as a "damn big insult,"[9] due to its focus on the
Japanese casualties rather than the brutality of the Japanese government and
the subsequent necessity of the bombing.[9]
No comments:
Post a Comment