Quote:
Originally Posted by william
Also Navy’s won the “Pulitzer for his great picture of a dying girl in Sudan.” 
Nice! I like the way Danielewski evokes the zeitgeist of our collective culture with an allusion to an actual person, Kevin Carter: In March 1993 Carter made a trip to southern Sudan with intentions of documenting the local rebel movement. However, upon arriving and witnessing the horror of the famine, Carter began to take photographs of starving victims. The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a seemingly well-fed vulture had landed nearby… Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography on May 23, 1994 at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library. Carter, by the way, committed suicide. |
I thought of this photo too when I read that part. However I had never seen the actual Carter photograph. I remember learning about it in school but never seeing it - but still, just the descripton of the photo was powerful to me. I'm glad you included it
Chapter III starts out with the question, "Why me?"? Moses, Dante, Navidson, and Truant. Dorthea Lange says in the chapter opener quote
"It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer."
Which is a wonderful thought, but doesn't answer Truant's question - why him? Are we to take it as fate that Truant found Zampano's work, or is it merely chance? Did Truant
need to find it for something to happen in his life?
A couple of my favorite quotes thus far:
"But I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul." (31)
Mistakes and flaws are what make us who we are - they are the loose string in the rug that gives it character and makes it stand apart from the rest.
"
Perhaps one reason Navidson became so enamored with photography was the way it gave permanence to moments that were so fleeting." (22)
Fleeting but powerful - so often people focus on taking pictures of the overall. The birthday party with a plethora of pictures of child with cake, child unwrapping gifts, child holding gift up and smiling. But focusing in on the child trying to lick frosting off his nose, or the discarded wrapping paper on the ground is taking a closer look at a moment that otherwise would have gone unnoticed and forgotten.