Vulture Stalking Child--Kevin Carter
The picture to the left is absolutely haunting.
I won’t go into all the gory details surrounding this photo. If you want to know them, this is a good place to start.
What I am focused on at the moment is the three perspectives playing out in this photo–the vulture, the child, and the cameraman.
The vulture is simply doing what it was made to do. It is a scavenger. It is an opportunist. It is born, with what we may term a sick ability, to recognize weakness; to recognize the onset of death. Like all of us the vulture is just trying to take care of a very basic need. It needs to eat to survive and the misfortune of some other animal is not its concern.
The child is also trying to survive. She is weak and hungry. She is suffering.
The cameraman is watching. Much like the vulture, he is serving a purpose. He is capturing the moment. Most of us would never know that moments like this happen if people like him were not there to show us, and what’s more, we would forget. The cameraman doesn’t just provide proof that the moment existed. He continues to remind us. He is our memory.
So many questions came to mind when I first saw this photo. Why do I see the vulture as evil in this photo? As I said above, it is only doing what it was put on earth to do. Was the child aware that the vulture was lurking? From my reading about the photo, it explains her parents were getting food at the time it was taken, but I can’t help wonder why would they leave her on the ground like that? Given the little girl’s circumstances, is living really worth it? If I were the cameraman, what would I do? Would I make sure I documented the moment or would I rush to protect the child? If I did protect the child, am I somehow interfering with nature? Is this horrible reality a part of some grand design?
In addition to all of my questions, I saw in this photo a metaphor for life.
Sometimes we are the vulture. We are simply doing what we have to do to survive. Sometimes to ensure that survival we have to do unpleasant things-things like taking over a job after someone was fired or laid off. It’s unfortunate that anyone had to lose their source of income (their source of survival), but in the end we’re glad it was them and not us.
Sometimes we are the child. We are tired and weak. We’re in a seemingly hopeless situation and right over our shoulder is someone or some thing lurking and waiting for us to give in.
And sometimes we are the cameraman. We simply watch. We watch as someone suffers. We watch as someone waits for their opportunity. We watch and we remember.
