Comments on: The Bang Bang Club. Photography in the Death Zones.

By: ashu

ashu — Thu, 04 Sep 2014 21:29:30 +0000

that is one hell of a picture which kevin clicked which has nothing to do with his morality…and as far as truth is concerned it is always relative… truth is different when you are clicking on the field like that, people sitting in their offices cant psychoanalyze those pictures… and we gonna meet a lot of pseudohumanists and pseudojournosympathizers on field…the key is dont give a shit…happy photography..:)

By: Shruti

Shruti — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:01:09 +0000

Wow… a great piece… and the book promises to be a fascinating read. Makes me want to go pick it up, like few reviews on non-fiction do! 🙂

By: Soumya Bandyapadhyay

Soumya Bandyapadhyay — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:20:53 +0000

story of kevin carter was sad. the above picture though shows a starving baby and a vulture waiting in background, but actually the story was different. the mother was with the baby and gone briefly away from the baby to collect food packets being distributed by a relief helicopter. there were a big vat of waste nearby and lot of vultures were there for it. suddenly carter finds this frame where the malnutritioned baby was waiting for his mother to arrive and the vulture sat in the background and he took the shot and presented a malformed reality of the actual situation.

he won pulitzer for it but also received vast criticism for wrong photojournalism. in his final days, carter accepted his fault as he has haunted by the memories of those days when he took this shot. finally, he committed suicide as he couldn’t bear the pain.

end of a very unfortunate story of yellow journalism.

By: Kajal Basu

Kajal Basu — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:14:12 +0000

Legendary guys, and tragic. Each one an exegesis on what we journos call Grief General: war-reporting related PTSD. One can become addicted to reporting on human suffering – and become a victim yourself. Like the Bang Bang Club.

By: Varadarajan Seshamani

Varadarajan Seshamani — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:04:42 +0000

There is direct physical cruelty and then the indirect ‘control’ cruelty. The latter causes the former.
The one is visually stark and the other is like the actions of a puppeteer – behind the scenes, killing by remote control.
Physical cruelty often starts with necessity and blind belief or emotional extreme – thereafter graduating to acting in drunkenness of power over another at a local level combined with greed.
Control cruelty is founded on greed, ego, grand thinking and sometimes, behind it is plain convenience and laziness!

How would one depict that?