A young girl, collapsed, with bones jutting and a vulture looming in the distance: everyone knows the iconic, Pullitzer-prize winning photograph taken by Kevin Carter of a starving Sudanese girl. It is an image that clearly demonstrates the power of photography. But when Carter committed suicide shortly after, everyone wanted to know: Can photography ever be “art for art’s sake?” Or is photography subject to a set of inescapable ethics? Susan Sontag first introduced this question in On Photography in 1977, exploring the ethical relationship of the spectator and the photographer.
