‘Our Failure of Empathy’: Kevin Carter, Susan Sontag, and the Problems of Photography

Abstract

In a discussion about images of war and suffering in Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), Susan Sontag remarks that the moral problem of the ‘educated class’ lies in ‘our failure […] of imagination, of empathy’.1 Given Sontag’s interest in photography, a question arises: can photographs promote empathy? The role of photographs as aide-mémoires and testaments to reality suggests that such images are ideal tools for cultivating emotional identification with others. Yet the commoditization of photography also renders it banal, leading to what has been condemned as the opportunistic exploitation of images by consumerist bourgeois society, as well as— disturbingly—the inhibition of empathy in discourse and practice. Bearing the realities of our media-saturated age in mind, I seek to explore the role of photography in relation to empathy by examining the visual impact, psychological effects and emotional influence of photographic media. In particular, I ground my analysis by focusing on the case of a Pulitzer Prize-winning image by the late South African photojournalist Kevin Carter. 2 Taken during the 1993 famine in Sudan, the photograph shows a starving Sudanese girl who collapsed on her journey to the nearest feeding centre. Keeling over, she almost touches the ground with her forehead. The most distressing element in the picture is that a vulture lurks behind her, sinisterly awaiting her death. Tragically, two months after receiving his Pulitzer Prize, Carter committed suicide in Johannesburg, at the age of 33.3 In the light of Sontag’s ideas, Carter’s photograph can be seen as a cautionary case in point. We are alerted not only to the potential hazards of photography, but also to the photograph as an instantiation of the complexities involved when contemplating the qualities of visual media. Such complexities concern the lure of images, the nature of human suffering, and the abiding tensions experienced by viewers torn between apathy and empathy.