Kevin Carter was a photojournalist from South Africa who traveled to Sudan with the United Nations in 1993 to give out food. When his UN plane landed and began distributing food, he noticed a little girl nearby that was hunched over on the ground with a vulture standing a couple meters behind her waiting for her to die. The girl was starving and malnourished, and she was also on death's door, so the photo that Carter took is particularly striking. While the girl's parents went to the UN plane to get food, he noticed the vulture land behind the girl, so he decided to take multiple photos. Carter was under strict orders not to touch the girl or try to pick her up because the UN did not want to take the risk of transmitting any diseases. Of the photos he took, Carter sold one of them to the New York Times, winning him a Pulitzer Prize for it the following year. However, three months after taking the photo, Kevin Carter could not shake the feeling of guilt for not doing something to save the child, leading him to commit suicide.  Certain elements of the picture, such as the dead vegetation, the lack of much color, and the vulture, help to give the viewer the idea that death surrounds the child in the image.

In the image, there are not very many thriving plants; most of them are small shrubs that are either partially dead or completely dead. Additionally, in the background of the image, the viewer can see a large amount of yellowed, dead vegetation. The prevalence of dirt on the ground, which the child is also hunched over in, helps to show that not much even grows there to begin with. This combination of imagery helps to convey to the viewer the idea that the area does not get much in the way of rain and is also very hot. Heat is also an important aspect of the picture because, based on the dead vegetation and the "haziness" of the picture, it makes the image seem like a very hot, humid, still day in the middle of the summer. The dead vegetation and the heat in the picture were a deliberate attempt by Carter to show the despair and hopelessness in the photo. Additionally, it reinforces the fact that a large portion of Africa has to rely on foreign food aid because the environment is not friendly to large numbers of crops.

There is also a lack of vibrant colors in the image; the only somewhat noticeable color is green, but even that is usually shrouded by haze. Besides green, grey and yellow help to magnify the black of the vulture as well as the blackness that is associated with death. The grey of the dirt is easily the most prevalent color in the image, and it is important to note that vultures prey on what is already dead. Based on how much grey fills the image, the viewer can conclude that nothing really grows in the area, so the child is obviously on the verge of death while the vulture patiently waits. Yellow is also a common color in the image, specifically regarding the vegetation. Normally, yellow is a fresh color that represents spring, new growth, wealth, etc., but in this image, the yellow is in the form of dead plants. During the middle of a hot summer, yellow can represent the death of vegetation by the intense heat of the sun. Kevin Carter successfully makes the child in the image seem "trapped" because she is surrounded by dead vegetation and heat, not to mention the fact that there is a vulture behind her. The one vibrant color in the image, green, is "under attack" by the heat because it is the least prevalent color in the photo. Additionally, the stronghold of green vegetation in the background is blurred by the heat haze. In this photo, Kevin Carter successfully uses colors that do not normally represent death to represent death.

The vulture is the most obvious symbol of death in the photo because they typically do not show up until something is already dead or almost there. It is impossible to find vultures circling a perfect healthy animal, so the fact that the one in this photo is patiently waiting behind the child shows that the girl is extremely malnourished and on the verge of dying. The vulture is also black, the most common color to be associated with death, and its darkness contrasts with the light colors of the rest of the image, making it stand out next to the child. Furthermore, the vulture appears to be looking at the child, or at least in the direction of the child, so it is obvious that it is there for the child. The picture could potentially have a completely different meaning if the vulture had its back turned on the child.

Overall, Kevin Carter's photo has a very powerful effect and sends a powerful message to the people that view it because it is easy to have "first world problems" that seem like a big deal to people in first world countries. Unfortunately, there are actual problems like this in third world countries that happen on a daily basis, but since the news does not cover it, it gets brushed to the side. The photograph is already powerful without any context because most everyone knows that vultures show up to animals, or a person in this case, that are almost dead so they can eat whatever it is when it dies. However, the image becomes even more powerful when the viewer learns that Carter took his own life three months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for the photo. Carter was overcome with guilt and depression after doing nothing to save the child, so the Pulitzer Prize could not outweigh that. In his eyes, he did not deserve the prize because he left a child there to die when he had the power to do something. Carter could not unsee the child laying there in the dirt while the vulture waited, and it is unfortunate that he committed suicide, but his choices while taking the photo were very deliberate. He successfully gave the image a filter of death through the way he framed it: dead vegetation, lack of color, and a lurking vulture. Three seemingly unrelated things come together in Carter's photo to represent death, despair, and hopelessness, and his choices while setting up the shot were deliberate to get the photo to turn out exactly the way he intended it to.

