flashquake Nonfiction

The eye of the lens
by Jillian Robinson

Soweto 1984. Dawn breaks. Soon the people will be up and about their business — out on the streets, catching the usual bus or train for work in the soft, shadowy light of the African morning.

You wait — camera poised, extra roll of film in pocket — for the sounds of the working day to begin; the sounds of voices, or footsteps, of doors opening and closing, of screaming, an explosion somewhere, of AK-47s.

Click, click, click. You are always there. Waiting for the shot that will show South Africa and the rest of the world exactly what it means to be black and living in a township. It is dangerous for a white man to work alone in this territory and your fellow photographers Joah Silva, Ken Oosterbroek and Greg Marinovich are usually close by. Collectively known as the Bang-bang club, due to an uncanny knack for getting close to the action wherever it might be, you are fuelled by dreams of international recognition and the possibility of democratic government replacing the Apartheid regime.

Days are spent frantically intercepting police radio broadcasts then scrambling between townships to cover the latest rounds of ANC/Inkatha violence.

Nights you drink with your buddies from the Bang-Bang club, smoke dagga, smoke the white pipe — anything to shake the day loose.

Sudan 1993. Crouched in the undergrowth, camera at the ready, you watch her crawl across the parched earth only feet from where you sit. Tiny, whimpering and almost dead, she inches her way toward the Red Cross feeding centre. A fat vulture lands behind her, stalking her pitiful struggle. Click, click, click. Pictures ensured, you chase the vulture but cannot remember later whether or not you helped the girl. The New York Times runs the photograph.

Tozoka, April 18 1994. Your friend, Ken Oosterbroek is killed in an outbreak of violence.

New York, May 23 1994. You step up to the dais at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library to collect the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. Your picture of the starving girl has made covers around the globe. You are proud, happy, you call New York "my town." Following a fortnight of celebrations you go home, drink, smoke dagga, smoke the white pipe.

Johannesburg, July 27 1994. Wearing unwashed Lee jeans and an Esquire t-shirt, you drive your red pickup to the suburbs then back it up against a blue gum among the fields you played in as a boy. Hooking a length of hosepipe to the truck's exhaust with silver gaffer tape, you run it to the passenger-side window. Then you get in the truck, put some music on your Walkman, start the engine running and lay your head down on your knapsack. You leave a note apologising, attempting to explain.

"Money!!" you say, but also, "I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain...of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...the pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist."

You conclude, "I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

This is an attempt to summarise the life of Kevin Carter, white South African, Pulitzer prize-winning photographer who committed suicide at the age of 33.

Copyright 2002 by Jillian Robinson

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