He was the recipient in 1994 of a Pulitzer Prize for his photograph depicting the 1993 famine in Sudan; he died by suicide four months after at the age of 33.

His story is depicted in the book The Bang-Bang Club,[2] written by Greg Marinovich and João Silva and published in 2000.

[6] Silva told Carter, who felt it was an opportunity to expand his freelance career and use work as a way to address personal problems.

During this time, Carter made a day trip with the UN to Juba in the south Sudan to photograph a barge with food aid for the region.

[10] Once in Ayod, Silva and Carter separated to shoot photos of famine victims, discussing between themselves the shocking situations they were witnessing.

The paper said that according to Carter, "she recovered enough to resume her trek after the vulture was chased away" but that it was unknown whether she reached the UN food center.

[19] In March 1994, Carter took a photograph of the three Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members being shot during their abortive invasion of Bophuthatswana just before the South African election.

Eamonn McCabe of The Guardian said: "It was a picture that made nearly every front page in the world, the one real photograph of the whole campaign.

"[20] Four months after being awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, Carter died of suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning on 27 July 1994 at the age of 33.

… I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.The final line is a reference to his recently deceased colleague Ken Oosterbroek.

A main character in the book House of Leaves, Will Navidson, is a photojournalist who is tormented by guilt over winning a Pulitzer Prize for a photo of a starving Sudanese girl but not helping her.

[26] The 2001 album Poets and Madmen, by American heavy metal band Savatage, is inspired by the life and death of Carter.