Manipulations around the photo "The Vulture and the Little Girl"

For the past 24 hours, the media have been manipulating the photo titled “The Vulture and the Little Girl” (which actually depicts a boy). The photographer, Kevin Carter, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1994. He committed suicide a few months later due to depression.

The accompanying text to the photo intertwines truth with lies. The screenshot of the post below is an example of the one that gained the most attention, with almost 1,500 shares. Numerous similar posts have hundreds of likes, with some even translated into Russian.

Many of these posts trace back to the original source — the user Hegumen Savatiy Sobko, who published such a text on his page on July 6 last year. 

Likely, a year later, Facebook”s “Memories” feature reminded someone of the post, prompting comments or shares. This resurgence caused the manipulation to go viral again, creating a cycle.

This relates to the text itself. In fact, the photo itself has been subject to manipulation almost from the day it was taken. Carter faced criticism for not helping the child and instead used the child’s suffering for his personal gain. Critics argued that the real vulture was Carter himself. 

Rather than recounting which statements in these posts are fake or manipulative, we’ll simply relate how the events truly unfolded, according to reputable sources and the participants involved.

In March 1993, South African photographer Kevin Carter traveled to Sudan, where armed conflicts and famine were rampant. Near the village of Ayod, Carter photographed the victims of famine. Seeking a break from the distressing scenes, he accidentally encountered a child lying in the hot sun. 

Soon, a vulture landed nearby. Carter captured the moment, and then waited another 20 minutes for the bird to spread its wings for a more dramatic shot. When this didn’t happen, he chased the vulture away. 

This occurred near a UN feeding center where the child was headed after resting. The parents were collecting food from a humanitarian airplane at the time, leaving their child unattended briefly.

The New York Times purchased and published the photo on March 26, 1993 under the title “The Vulture and the Little Girl.” Later, it was revealed that the child in the photo was actually a boy named Kong Niong. 

On the same day, hundreds of readers inundated the newspaper with calls to inquire about the child’s fate. 

In response, the paper published a special note stating that, according to the photographer, the child “recovered enough to continue her walk after the vulture was chased away. It is unknown whether she reached the center.” 

Despite this clarification, people continued to question Carter, accusing him of exploiting the child for the sake of a photograph. Both readers and fellow journalists criticized him for not immediately chasing the bird away and for not assisting the child after taking the picture. Carter was condemned for making the child continue walking to the feeding center alone while being exhausted. 

However, Carter was working during a period when photojournalists were instructed not to touch famine victims to prevent the spread of infections. Carter estimated that twenty people an hour were dying at the feeding center. This meant that the child in the photo was not unique in their suffering. Despite this, Carter often expressed regret for not helping the child, although there was little he could have done.

As El Mundo reports, if you examine the photo in high resolution, you can see a plastic bracelet from the UN food station on the child’s right hand. The code “T3” is written on it with a blue marker, indicating that the child had already been registered at the center.

Florence Muren, who coordinated efforts at the makeshift clinic, explained that two letters were used for labeling: “T” for severe malnutrition and “S” for those needing supplementary feeding. The number indicated the order of arrival at the food center. 

“This means that Kong suffered from severe malnutrition. He was the third to reach the center, recovered, survived hunger, the vulture, and the dire predictions of Western readers,” Florence said.

Eighteen years after the photo was taken, in 2011, the staff of the publication Crónica traveled to Ayod to uncover unknown facts about this story. 

They interviewed dozens of local residents until they found a woman named Mary Nyaluak, who had been distributing food at the center 18 years earlier.

The first thing she mentioned was, “It’s a boy in the photo, not a girl. His name is Kong Niong, and he lives outside the village.” (This was new information to the journalists-ed.). 

Finding Kong’s family was then straightforward. The father immediately recognized his son in the photo and confirmed that Kong had “recovered from that hunger but died four years ago from a fever.”

However, there is a blind spot in this story. Why did the woman know where the boy lived, but was unaware that he had already died by that time?

Carter’s suicide 

On July 27, 1994, Kevin Carter committed suicide. He taped one end of a hose to the exhaust pipe of his pickup truck and put the other end through the window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 33. In his suicide note, he expressed despair over his lack of money, depression, debts, and the haunting memories of murders, corpses, and the hungry and injured children he had encountered during his professional career