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Photo Stories, 2nd prize

January 01, 1974

A starving child in Kao, Niger.

January 01, 1974

A woman begging in the streets of Calcutta, India.

January 01, 1974

Faces of Hunger. The effects of drought and famine in Africa's Sahel, Ethiopia and India.

January 01, 1974

His body wasted by malnutrition, a nomad boy waits for food or help in the Sahara desert.

January 01, 1974

A starving boy in Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India.

July 01, 1974

A mother comforts her starving child at a camp in Kao, a tiny village in the Tahoua region of central Niger. From 1968 to 1974, severe drought devastated Niger’s livestock and crop production. The drought not only affected Niger but the entire Sahel region, where an estimated 350,000 people died of starvation in 1974. Many food production problems compounded to produce the famine, including the global energy crisis, worldwide inflation and recession, and the lowest levels of wealthy nations’ emergency food reserves since World War II due to massive crop failures and natural disasters. World grain prices became so high that the Nigerien government could not buy and deliver enough food to its citizens. Because there was no food stockpiled in Kao, the 2,500 villagers were dependent on supply roads for relief aid. Large quantities of aid eventually arrived to the region in May, at the start of the rainy season when supply roads were impassible due to violent rainstorms. By August 1974, several people were dying in Kao each day. In September, the government announced it was replacing trucks with camel caravans to supply the Tahoua district towns.

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World Press Photo of the Year,World Press Photo of the Year

Ovie Carter

Chicago Tribune

1975 Photo Contest, Photo Stories, 2nd prize
Photographer

Ovie Carter

Chicago Tribune

01 January, 1974

A starving child in Kao, Niger.

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About the photographer

Ovie Carter

Ovie Carter (Indianola, Mississippi 1946) studied at the Ray Vogue School of Photography in Chicago using the G.I. Bill, after a spending a year in the US Air Force (1966-1967). ...

Read the full biography

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1975 Photo Contest

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