George Rodger
{{Short description|British photographer (1908–1995)}}
{{EngvarB|date=January 2022}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = George Rodger
| image = File:George Rodger 1941.png
| caption = Rodger in 1941
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=y|1908|03|19}}
| birth_place = Hale, Cheshire, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|1995|07|24|1908|03|19}}
| death_place = Ashford, Kent, England
| other_names =
| organization = Magnum Photos
| spouse = {{plainlist|
- Cicely Rodger (died 1949)
- {{marriage|Lois "Jinx" Witherspoon|1952}}{{Cite web|url= https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/14/opinion/IHT-more-to-the-picture-letters-to-the-editor.html|title=Opinion / More to the Picture: LETTER to the EDITOR|website=The New York Times|date=October 14, 1994}}}}
| children = 3, including Peter Rodger
| relatives = Elliot Rodger (grandson)
| known_for =
| occupation = Photographer
}}
George William Adam Rodger (19 March 1908 – 24 July 1995){{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/26/obituaries/george-rodger-is-dead-at-87-a-pioneering-photojournalist.html|title=George Rodger Is Dead at 87; A Pioneering Photojournalist|work=The New York Times|date=26 July 1995|author=Alan Riding}} was a British photojournalist. He was noted for his work in Africa, and for photographing mass deaths at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the end of the World War II.{{cite book|last=Celinscak|first=Mark|title=Distance from the Belsen Heap: Allied Forces and the Liberation of a Concentration Camp|year=2015|publisher=University of Toronto Press|location=Toronto|isbn=9781442615700}}
Life and career
Image:Rodger, Bergen-Belsen.jpg in 1945.]]
Born in Hale, Cheshire, of English, Scottish, German and Swiss descent, Rodger went to school at St. Bees School in Cumberland. He joined the British Merchant Navy and sailed around the world. While sailing, Rodger wrote accounts of his travels and taught himself photography to illustrate his travelogues. He was unable to get his travel writing published; after a short spell in the United States, where he failed to find work during the Depression, Rodger returned to Britain in 1936. In London, he found work as a photographer for the BBC's The Listener magazine. In 1938 he had a brief stint working for the Black Star Agency.
With the outbreak of the Second World War, Rodger had a strong urge to chronicle the war. His photographs of the Blitz gained him a job as a war correspondent for Life magazine, based in the United States. Rodger covered the war in West Africa extensively and, towards the end of the war, followed the Allies' liberation of France, Belgium and Netherlands. He also covered the retreat of the British forces in Burma. He was probably the only British war reporter/photographer allowed to write a story on the Burma Road by travelling on it into China, with special permission from the Chinese military.{{cn|date=October 2015}}
Rodger was one of many photographers to enter the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the first being members of the British Army Film and Photographic Unit. His photographs of the survivors and piles of corpses were published in Life and Time magazines and were highly influential in showing the reality of the death camps. Rodger later recalled how, after spending several hours at the camp, he was appalled to realise that he had spent most of the time looking for graphically pleasing compositions of the piles of bodies lying among the trees and buildings.
This traumatic experience led Rodger to conclude that he could not work as a war correspondent again. Leaving Life, he travelled throughout Africa and the Middle East, continuing to document these areas' wildlife and peoples.
Africa. Cameroons. Giant cranes like these jutting up over the construction work on the Eda dam have given Africa a... - NARA - 541655.tif|Cameroon, ca.1950
Africa. French Equatorial Africa. The old and the new - almost. The "wheelbarrow express" transports loads of... - NARA - 541650.tif|French Equatorial Africa, ca.1950
Netherlands. Land reclamation in Holland with help of Marshall Plan Funds - NARA - 541707.tif|Flevoland, ca.1950
Netherlands. (An additional 480 square miles is being reclaimed with the aid of Marshall Plan counterpart fund. This... - NARA - 541710.tif|Flevoland, ca,1950
Founding member of Magnum Photos and work in Africa
In 1947, Rodger became a founding member of Magnum Photos. Over the next thirty years, he worked as a freelance photographer, taking on many expeditions and assignments to photograph the people, landscape and nature of African nations. Much of Rodger's photojournalism in Africa was published in National Geographic as well as other magazines and newspapers.
His photographs made in 1948 and 1949 of indigenous people of the Nuba mountains, in the Sudanese province of Kordofan, and the Latuka and other tribes of southern Sudan, have been called "some of the most historically important and influential images taken in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century".{{Cite web|last=|first=|year=2017|title=George Rodger. Nuba & Latuka. The colour photographs.|url=https://www.magnumphotos.com/shop/collections/books/george-rodger-nuba-latuka-the-colour-photographs-signed-book/|access-date=23 May 2020|website=Magnum photos}} As Rodger wrote several years later, "When we came to leave the Nuba Jebels (mountains), we took with us only memories of a people ... so much more hospitable, chivalrous and gracious than many of us who live in the 'Dark Continents' outside Africa."{{Cite web|last=Schuman|first=Aaron|date=5 June 2017|title='Lost' early color photographs of Sudanese tribes published|url=https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/05/africa/george-rodger-nuba-latuka-sudan/index.html|access-date=23 May 2020|website=CNN}} In 1951, Rodger published his photo essay on the Nuba and Latuka also in National Geographic.{{Cite web|last=National Geographic|date=28 November 2014|title=Wrestling keeps 'identity of the Nuba' alive in Sudanese refugee camps|url=https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141128-nuba-wrestlers-refugee-sudan-culture-tradition-infocus/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200519001140/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141128-nuba-wrestlers-refugee-sudan-culture-tradition-infocus/|url-status=dead|archive-date=19 May 2020|access-date=23 May 2020|website=National Geographic News|language=en}} In the 1960s, his pictures prompted controversial German photographer and filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to travel to the Nuba mountains for her own photo stories on the Nuba people.{{Cite web|last=Holocaust education & archive research team|date=2010|title=Leni Riefenstahl|url=http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/holoprelude/riefenstahl.html|access-date=11 December 2019|website=Holocaust research project}}
A retrospective exhibition of Rodger's work was held at Imperial War Museum North in 2008.{{Cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/the-golden-age-of-photojournalism-is-recalled-in-george-rodger-exhibition-768072.html |title=The golden age of photojournalism is recalled in George Rodger exhibition |first=Arifa |last=Akbar |date=4 January 2008 |work=The Independent |accessdate=9 March 2013}}
=Marriage, family=
Rodger's first wife, Cicely, who travelled extensively with him in Africa, died during childbirth in 1949. In 1952, he married his American assistant Lois "Jinx" Witherspoon and the pair had two sons, one of whom, Peter, became a filmmaker in Britain. He was the grandfather of Elliot Rodger, who committed the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California, United States, where he killed six people and injured fourteen others before committing suicide.{{cite web |first=Philip |last=Sherwell |title=California drive-by shooting: 'Son of Hunger Games assistant director' Elliot Rodger suspected of killing six |date=24 May 2014 |accessdate=2 July 2014 |website=The Telegraph |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10853875/California-drive-by-shooting-Son-of-Hunger-Games-assistant-director-Elliot-Rodger-suspected-of-killing-six.html |archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20140525210142/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10853875/California-drive-by-shooting-Son-of-Hunger-Games-assistant-director-Elliot-Rodger-suspected-of-killing-six.html |archivedate=25 May 2014 |url-status=live}}
Publications
References
{{reflist}}
External links
{{commons}}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20051222135811/http://www.magnumphotos.com/c/htm/TreePf_MAG.aspx?Stat=Photographers_Portfolio&E=29YL53UWWRR&Det=T Magnum biography]
- {{in lang|fr}} Sample [https://web.archive.org/web/20160109155505/http://www.photo.fr/portfolios/rodger/ portfolio of Rodger's WWII photographs]
- [http://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/africaphotos/ Brunei Gallery], Samples of Rodger's African photographs
- [http://www.occasionalwitness.com The Nuba Mountains Homepage]
- [https://www.icp.org/search-results/George%20Rodger/all/all/relevant/0 George Rodger photographs] at International Center of Photography
{{Photography of the Holocaust}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodger, George}}
Category:British people of Scottish descent
Category:British people of German descent
Category:Photographers from Cheshire
Category:British war photographers
Category:People from Hale, Greater Manchester
Category:Photography in Myanmar
Category:Holocaust photographers
Category:Photography in Africa
Category:Expatriate photographers in Sudan