Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, died in 2018. In his final years, he became a global celebrity and conservation icon, helping raise awareness about the brutality of poaching.
There was a lot of hope riding on Sudan, the last male northern white rhinoceros. He was labelled the “world’s most eligible bachelor” by the dating app Tinder, the “most famous rhino” by various news outlets and a “gentle giant” by the armed guards who watched over him 24-hours-a-day. But Sudan’s life carried the baggage of a species decimated by poaching.
In the Ol Pejeta conservancy at the foot of Mount Kenya, AFP photojournalist Tony Karumba captured a celebrated snapshot of Sudan on 5 December 2016, approximately 15 months before the rhino’s death.
At the forefront of Karumba’s image is the tender relationship between the humans at the conservancy and Sudan. The photo is iconic but not iconoclastic, exemplifying an ordinary moment of the all-too-late-yet-genuine care that northern white rhinos received from the species that decimated them. Once lost, gone forever, only to live in photos like Karumba’s photo series.
As Sudan was released from his pen to pasture, Karumba captured his pictures. “There’s trust and love all over that moment,” says Karumba. “Being in Sudan’s presence always felt for me like a visit with a sage; his demeanour, despite his behemoth self, had a way of conveying a calm patience with me and though his minders would always be hovering just outside my camera’s frame, he [Sudan] was accepting of my wary intrusions and poised as though he was aware of his symbolism as the last icon of his subspecies.”
The photo showcases Sudan’s craniate profile and his two horns, a trait characterising the white rhino subspecies, shaved off to deter poachers. Sudan’s carer calms the two-and-a-half-tonned (2,500 kg)animal, whose head is longer than the man’s torso. Karumba’s vantage, his low viewpoint on Sudan, “emphasised the power and the stature of the rhino,” says Michael Pritchard, programmes director at the Royal Photographic Society in the UK.
“The power of this photograph is the interaction between this impressive animal and this human,” says Pritchard. “There’s a kindness, a relationship.”
source/content: bbc.com / (Riley Farrell)/ (headline edited)
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Tony Karumba’s photo of Sudan with his carer made the rhino a global sensation in his final year (Credit: Getty Images)
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SUDAN