Early Life
Kevin Carter was born in apartheid South Africa and grew up in a middle-class, whites-only neighborhood. As a child, he occasionally saw police raids to arrest blacks who were illegally living in the area. He said later that he questioned how his parents, a Catholic, "liberal" family, could be what he described as 'lackadaisical' about fighting against apartheid.
After high school, Carter dropped out of his studies to become a pharmacist and was drafted into the Army. To escape from the infantry he enlisted in the Air Force, which locked him into four years of service. In 1980, he witnessed a black mess-hall waiter being insulted. Carter defended the man, resulting in him being badly beaten by the other servicemen. He then went AWOL, attempted to start a new life as a radio disk-jockey named "David". This, however, proved more difficult than he had anticipated.. Soon after, he decided to serve out the rest of his required military service. After witnessing the Church Street bombing in Pretoria in 1983, he decided to become a news photographer.
Read more about this topic: Kevin Carter
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,—both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT—as his RESISTANCE.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)