"However, Carter was working in a time when photojournalists were told not to touch famine victims for fear of spreading disease. Carter estimated that there were twenty people per hour dying at the food center. The child was not unique. Regardless, Carter often expressed regret that he had not done anything to help the girl, even though there was not much that he could have done, in all actuality.

This was his suicide note; very depressing:

“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.”"

I take it you've never known a professional photographer? They wait until they get the "right" shot and that can take an extremely lonnggggggggggggg time.

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@bluecat*dancing wrote:

I don't understand how that shot could even be staged - unless you had a very well-trained vulture.

 

 

I can only imagine how horrible it would have been to be surrounded by such heartbreak and know that  a display of human kindness such as a touch would have resulted in not only the death of a child but also those with compromised immune systems who came into contact with her. Professional photographers are there to capture images not to make things worse.

 

 

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photographers have a job to do and it's just as important as humanitarians

they create awareness of the plight of these people

 

they go to wars but they dont pick up a gun , and record history as it is for future generations

 

If they let compassion get in the way of what they are there for they could not do their job

 

they probably know the futility first hand of saving one child when there are probably ten more down the track

 

and ten more and ten more .

 

If you never saw that pic you would never feel that compation and we are the only ones who can help

 

maybe this one picture may inspire one hundred people to do something about it

 

And I should think that something along those lines would be going through the photographers mind  

 

or he would be taking pics of the eiffel tower or such

 

 

ahhh, ok, now I've read that other link. Thanks Julia

bit different to the headline in the first image

Agreed. Its a case of "don't shoot the messenger".

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@bluecat*dancing wrote:

I take it you've never known a professional photographer? They wait until they get the "right" shot and that can take an extremely lonnggggggggggggg time.

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Exactly.  Staged.

Soldiers suffer the same feeling, having spoken to people who went to Somalia and Rwanda. Feeling helpless at not being able to do more
and having to be cruel to be kind.



Opmania
"they go to wars but they dont pick up a gun , and record history as it is for future generations"

A good comparison.

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@bluecat*dancing wrote:

Agreed. Its a case of "don't shoot the messenger".

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I have stated what I would do.  Is that so hard to understand?

 

I would do what the people I know did in Rwanda.

I think that we might have a definition of what "staged" is. To me, it means to place specific items in a specific place . The photographer had nothing to do with where the child or the vulture were.