Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Winner ForSudan Photo, Is Dead at 33

Kevin Carter, a Pulitzer Winner For
Sudan Photo, Is Dead at 33
By BILL KELLER
Published: July 29, 1994
Kevin Carter, the South African
photographer whose image of a
starving Sudanese toddler stalked
by a vulture won him a Pulitzer
Prize this year, was found dead on
Wednesday night, apparently a
suicide, the police said today. He
was 33.
The police said Mr. Carter's body
and several letters to friends and
family were discovered in his
pickup truck, parked in a
Johannesburg suburb. They said an
inquest showed he died of carbon
monoxide poisoning.
Mr. Carter began his work as a
sports photographer in 1983, but
soon moved to the front lines of
South African political strife,
recording images of repression,
anti-apartheid protest and fratricidal
violence for several South African
newspapers and more recently as a
freelance photographer.
He was arrested several times for
violating a South African ban on
reporting of the domestic conflict.
Life Close to the Edge
A few days after his Pulitzer was
announced in April, Mr. Carter was
nearby when one of his closest
friends and professional
companions, Ken Oosterbroek, was
shot dead photographing a gun
battle in Tokoza township.
Friends said Mr. Carter was a man
of tumultuous emotions, which
brought passion to his work but
also drove him to extremes of
elation and depression. He often
told friends if he had not become
a photographer he would have
been a race car driver, because he
enjoyed living close to the edge.
Last year, saying he needed a
break from South Africa's turmoil,
he paid his own way to the
southern Sudan to photograph a
civil war and famine he felt the
world was overlooking.
His picture of an emaciated girl
collapsing on the way to a feeding
center, as a plump vulture lurked
in the background, was published
first in The New York Times and
The Mail & Guardian, a
Johannesburg weekly. Later it was
displayed in many other
publications as a metaphor for
Africa's despair.
The reaction to the picture was so
strong that The Times published
an unusual editors' note on the
fate of the girl. Mr. Carter said she
resumed her trek to the feeding
center. He chased away the
vulture.
The Horror of the Work
Afterward, he told an interviewer in
April, he sat under a tree for a
long time, "smoking cigarettes and
crying."
"Kevin always carried around the
horror of the work he did," his
father, Jimmy Carter, told the
South African Press Association
tonight.
Mr. Carter was born in
Johannesburg on Sept. 13, 1960.
He began as a freelance
photographer for The Sunday
Express, a tabloid that is now
defunct, and moved in 1984 to
South Africa's largest daily
newspaper, The Star, in
Johannesburg.
He worked as chief photographer
at The Sunday Tribune and started
the photo department at The Daily
Mail in 1990. He remained with
The Mail when it reverted to a
weekly format, and last year began
full-time work for Reuters.
Mr. Carter is survived by his
parents, a 6-year-old daughter,
and two sisters.