George Rodger

  • Birth date: March 18, 1908.
  • Birth place: Hale (Greater Manchester)✈.
  • Death date: July 25, 1995.
  • Death place: Ashford (Kent)✈.
  • Field: Photography.
  • Main interests: Photojournalism, Documentary photography.
  • Main subjects: Travel, War.

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.1

A few pictures

BURMA. Emergency hospital run by Doctor Seagrove set up in a school building. Wounded soldiers from the Chinese Army are treated by Burmese nurses. 1942.
G.B. ENGLAND. London. Steel helmets were worn by all who could get them. Life in London during The Blitz of World War II in1939-40. 1940.
G.B. ENGLAND. London. Westminster. Whitehall. Hitler’s Doom effigy outside the Free French headquarters at 4 Carleton Gardens. Life in London during The Blitz of World War II in 1939-40. 1940.
UGANDA. Pygmies. “Dance of the forest people”. The Bachimbiri and Wagasero dance their own version of a courting dance, the “Kamundere”, before a semi-circle of men of the tribes who kneel before them. 1948.
SOUTH AFRICA. Basutoland(Lesotho). Young Basuto boy wrapped in blankets against the cold on the Thaba Bosiu (Mountain of the Night). 1947. In 1868 Sir Philip Woodehouse, Govenor of of the Cape Colony was authorised to recognise King Moshesh and his Basuto followers as British Subjects. Therby Basutoland became the first of the High Commission territories in South Africa to some under colonial rule. In the past Basutoland was the scene of much tribal fghting, centering around the mountain of Thaba Bosieu (Mountain of the Night).
SUDAN. A gathering of the Nuba tribe in the Korongo Jebels (mountians). The Nubas pride themselves as wrestlers, their tribal sport. They are powdered in wood ash so they can get a grip of each other. 1949.
HAITI. Port-au-Prince. Young Haitian girl. 1950.
INDONESIA. BALI. Ubud. Young girl in Ubud marketplace. 1953
JORDAN. Emir Abdullah playing chess.1941.
Africa. Sudan. Aluma Plateau. 1954. Line of Bari women.
ALGERIA, 1957. Through the windscreen on route to In-Salah.
ALGERIA. Sahara. Palmeries of Kerzaz near the Great Western Erg. 1957.
BURMA. Shan States. World War II. A bamboo house built on stilts on Inle Lake. 1942.
INDONESIA. Bali. Two young Balineese girls rest by rice paddies under the sacred mountain Gunung Agung near the village of Iseh. 1953.