The Bang-Bang Club (32 page)

In between showing his pictures to magazines and agencies, meeting and partying with friends and photographers, Kevin had also met a woman in New York that he told people he was in love with, that she was wonderful. If ever there was a moment that he could have turned his life around, this was it. He had made many contacts and people really liked him - Kevin was at his best: fun, energized and bubbling over with enthusiasm.

During that time, Nancy Lee again asked him about the picture. He talked about how he had worked the situation, walked all around the child, working the scene from different angles. What he had really wanted was for that bird to flap its wings, he said. He was describing it to her in a macho way - all Nancy could think was it was the kind of situation where most people would snap a few pictures but then see what they could do for the child.

‘There was something cold in the calculated way in which he was waiting for the bird’s wings to flap, for heaven’s sake,’ Nancy Lee said. ‘I was a little surprised by that, but as time went on, I heard him telling
the story to other people. It metamorphosed into: he took the picture and sat down under a tree and cried, and that he felt he could not go back to that feeding-centre. He had just come from there and everyone was screaming in hunger and there was nothing he could do to help them and he just could not even bear to take her there. But he was sure she made it to the feeding-centre because he could not hear the screams of hunger any more.’ It was an illogical explanation, but Kevin was trying to find a story that he felt comfortable in telling, that was comfortable to hear.

The first version of the story which Joao had heard from Kevin - in Sudan just minutes after he had taken the picture - did indeed mention that he had chased the vulture away. But he had not mentioned the child getting up and walking towards the feeding-centre. He had sat under a tree and wept. Joao remembered how he mentioned Megan and that all he could think of was holding her. Kevin had told a little more to his friend and confidant, Reedwaan, immediately on his return from Sudan, except to Reedwaan he said that, while he was framing and shooting the picture, the thought was going through his mind, ‘Should I chase the bird away?’ One part of him said chase it away, but another said, ‘Just shoot, you’re here to work.’ He told Reedwaan that he did try to shoo the bird away after he had finished taking pictures, but that it wouldn’t go far away and he just couldn’t deal with it, so he walked away and started crying.

It was only really once the questions began that Kevin elaborated on the incident. In response to readers’ letters to
The New York Times
, Kevin told the editors, ‘that she recovered enough to resume her trek after the vulture was chased away’. That was fourteen months before he was to collect the prize in New York.

In an interview with
American Photo Magazine
, Kevin said that he had come upon the chilling scene after wandering alone for two days in the desert, ‘freaked out and sunburnt’, as he attempted to cope with the tragic situation he had been covering. ‘There were hundreds of children starving like that and worse, you just meander from one horror to the next.’ In answer to what he did after taking the picture, he said, ‘I
walked away, damnit!’ still upset by ‘the horrible pornography’ of the death and destruction he had witnessed.

But whatever Kevin felt he had to say to combat criticism about his not helping the child, I - and some of his friends - felt that the picture was something that he had done which he hoped would be free of the negative sides of his personality and character. It was an escape from his perception of himself as a failure. It was a pure moment when he shone, a moment of perfection. But the picture was not free of him - the questions were always there, and it gnawed at him. Kevin stated, in
American Photo
, ‘This is my most successful image after ten years of taking pictures, but I do not want to hang it on my wall. I hate it.’

 

Kevin called South Africa regularly from New York. Mostly he called Julia Lloyd to speak to Megan. He would chatter away to ‘his baby’ and ask her if she had been brushing her teeth. But Julia also received calls of a different kind, from pay phones in the early hours of the morning: ‘You can’t believe the drugs here, so amazing and cheap, $40 a gram, it’s incredible.’ Julia kept saying, ‘Kevin, shut up over the phone. What’s with you?’ She recalls that he had difficulty speaking as he was so stoned.

Winning the Pulitzer had given Kevin a confidence he had never had before. He felt that he had finally earned his parents’ respect by achieving a triumph that was acknowledged world-wide. It was as if winning the Pulitzer made up for his failures: not finishing his pharmacy degree; his military years and the shameful suicide attempt; not managing to make a life with Julia and Megan. But mostly it would make everything okay with his conservatively Catholic father, who - in Kevin’s mind - thought of his son as an aimless loser. He planned to be a perfect father to Megan. He had always struggled with money for his daughter, but now he was going to be more than just a loving father (the only picture he ever carried in his wallet was of Megan), he was going to be a good provider too.

Kevin returned from New York with his Filofax filled with new contacts and a deal with Sygma. He had made all the steps to complete
his transformation from a little-known photographer at the southern tip of Africa into a leading professional. He had always wanted to be taken seriously, and, suddenly, with his winning the Pulitzer, people were indeed taking him seriously. He had even received a congratulatory letter from US President Bill Clinton and Hillary. But the success also placed him under massive pressure to succeed. Every time he lifted a camera, he felt he had to attain the levels of the vulture picture. The photographer’s cliché that you’re only as good as your last picture haunted him. He knew of all the snide remarks being made about the ‘budgie’ picture (as the famous shot was jokingly referred to by photographers) being a fluke. Of course there was luck involved - all photography involves luck, but Kevin had gone to Sudan on his own money and had been in the right place at the right time to get that picture. And he had taken it. He deserved whatever acclaim came his way.

Kevin arranged with his father Jimmy to pick him up from Johannesburg airport on 23 June. He was euphoric and for once completely at ease with his father, with whom he had always had a difficult relationship. Back in the city, he proudly showed off his new cameras. Then he produced a bottle of wine. He knew how much his father enjoyed a glass of red wine and had selected a good Cabernet from the duty-free. Jimmy was touched by the gesture, but by the time he left, he forgot the bottle. Concerned that Kevin might take this as a rejection of the gift, he left him a message: ‘Kevin, don’t you drink my wine! I want it next time I see you - you’d better bring it along.’

A day or two after he had returned, Kevin called Judith and they agreed to meet for lunch. Judith, like most South African-based journalists, was in the throes of a post-headline-hogging depression. All the excitement of the elections, the thrill of reporting on history as it happened, had dissipated. The let-down of normal life - after the surreality of the previous years - combined with delayed exhaustion; she was emotionally flat, discharged. And there was Kevin, full of energy, exciting and kinetic. He was tanned and had lost his gaunt, cadaverous look. He was not as jumpy as usual and did not seem to be
stoned, which was surprising after the coked-up calls she had received from New York. People were coming over to their table to greet him. Judith felt vaguely envious.

They mostly discussed New York, but the big theme of the lunch was how he and Judith were going to team up. He was looking forward to going to Cape Town to do pictures of Mandela and to cover French president Francois Mitterand’s visit - both assignments for Sygma clients.

The French president arrived in Cape Town on 4 July and then flew to Johannesburg the following day. Kevin followed him up and late on the afternoon of 5 July Kevin, Joao and Gary trailed the presidential convoy to Soweto. The street was packed with well-wishers and curious people crowded the narrow bridge over the polluted Klip River to watch the cavalcade of bullet-proof limousines slowly make their way through one of Soweto’s poorest shanty towns - Kliptown. It was here in Kliptown that the ANC’s manifesto, the Freedom Charter, had been drafted and signed 49 years before, and Mitterand had come to make a pilgrimage to one of the Struggle’s cornerstones. The sun was sinking to the horizon through the pall of winter smog blanketing the township, and they paused long enough to make a few frames before catching up with Mitterand and Mandela. Kevin was thrilled with his shots, sure that Sygma would love them. But within days Kevin would be down again - Sygma complained that he had shipped too late for French deadlines and that the images were too poor to show to the client.

 

A few days later Joao was watching television at home when the phone rang: it was Kevin. His mood had changed drastically for the worse from a few days before when Joao had seen him in Soweto. The transformation, even for one who’d witnessed it so often, bemused Joao. Almost in tears, Kevin complained that his life was once again a mess. Joao listened for a while, eventually losing his temper, and told Kevin to ‘Get on with it.’ He berated Kevin uninterrupted for a few minutes, reminding him that he had been somewhere close by in Sudan when Kevin had stumbled on to the vulture picture, yet he had little to show for the trip. This started Kevin off on The Picture and how it had
changed his life. He felt that everything he’d done in the past had been overshadowed by this one picture. The expectations that came with the Pulitzer paralyzed him to the point that he was afraid to perform, afraid to take pictures in case he fell short.

It was a bad time to seek sympathy. Joao was nowhere near recovered from the shock of Ken’s death. Neither was Kevin, and Joao knew it, but he’d had enough and all he wanted to do was deal with his own pain: ‘You won the Pulitzer,’ he told Kevin. ‘Only you can deal with that.’

The next day Kevin called Judith, pleading with her that he needed to see her. When he came to pick her up, he was so stoned that she insisted that they go in her car to Rocky Street, a trendy, rather downbeat street lined with bars and live-music venues. Over several whiskies, Kevin described how he hadn’t been able to leave his place in Troyeville for two whole days, too depressed to do anything except drugs. ‘I’ve fallen into a black hole,’ he said miserably and telling her about his ‘fuck-up’ of the Mitterand assignment and beginning to cry. Judith later told me that she had never seen him look worse. His skin was yellow and waxy, his eyes were glittery and red, and his hands shook as he lit one cigarette after the other. Another photographer friend came to their table shortly after and suggested they go to a third photographer’s house to do drugs. There, the guys snorted line after line of cocaine, and started passing around photographs. They were all talking nostalgically about the good old days, but the good old days were only one month old.

Judith felt distinctly out of place - she didn’t like what the sad memories and cocaine were doing to Kevin. She nevertheless felt responsible for him. When she finally succeeded in dragging him away, she took him back to her house. The night was cold and they stretched out with the dogs next to the fireplace, drinking coffee. Kevin asked if she would take him in for a while. He told her how he was scared to be on his own, scared of what he might do to himself early in the morning and late at night, when the panic attacks set in. If she would only let him stay for just a while, he could get himself together.

Realizing that he was on the edge, Judith agreed to let him stay with her, on two conditions: that he not use drugs in the house and that he seek professional help. ‘I’m giving you three weeks,’ she said, telling him not to give up his place. ‘You’re staying with me because it’s a crisis situation, but you’re not moving in with me permanently.’

18

LIFE SHOULD BE ROARING

I have got to a point where the pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... and I am haunted by the loss of my friend Ken.

Kevin Carter

By the time that Kevin moved in with Judith, I had lost patience with him. We were dealing with so many other issues that we did not have a clue about resolving, yet I felt that Kevin had been complicating the most simple matters, inventing extra drama. I didn’t want to be a part of it, and I let him know. After Ken’s death, I had my own fears to contend with. I had always been a physically able person and now my body was unreliable. My right thumb had been shattered, I had lost half of the muscle in my left breast and my one lung was dodgy. I didn’t have energy to spare for Kevin.

Kevin was certainly quite selfish emotionally. He needed to share his pain and at that time Joao could share it with him, so the bond between them strengthened. Kevin would often tell Judith how much he loved Joao - he was an anchor for Kevin and had become a substitute for Ken. Joao was like a brother, but Kevin did not describe me like that. He
didn’t feel close to me that way any more - to me it felt as if he could no longer trust me, though back then I could not understand why.