Background
George Rodger was born on March 19, 1908, in Hale, Cheshire, United Kingdom.
St. Bees School, Cumbria, the Foundation block seen from the church tower. The original Elizabethan school is the range on the left of the quad
St. Bees School, Cumbria, the Foundation block seen from the church tower. The original Elizabethan school is the range on the left of the quad
1945
(Children of Italy: Little girl in the picture has been se...)
Children of Italy: Little girl in the picture has been sent to the garbage dump to try and find food for the family. Her mother waits with a cloth bag to receive the spoils
George Rodger was born on March 19, 1908, in Hale, Cheshire, United Kingdom.
George Rodger went to school at St. Bees School in Cumberland. He joined the British Merchant Navy and sailed around the world. While sailing, he wrote accounts of his travels and taught himself photography to illustrate his travelogues. After a short spell in the United States, where he failed to find work during the Depression, George Rodger returned to Britain in 1936.
In London, George Rodger 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 before being hired as a Life staff photographer, based in the United States. He covered the war in West Africa extensively and, towards the end of the war, followed the Allies' liberation of France, Belgium, and Holland. George Rodger also covered the retreat of the British forces in Burma.
George 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. This traumatic experience led Rodger to conclude that he could not work as a war correspondent again. Leaving Life, George Rodger traveled throughout Africa and the Middle East, continuing to document these areas' wildlife and peoples.
In 1947, George 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.
Peasant children from a small village in Naples province, most of whom have lost their fathers and brothers to German labor gangs, and whose homes and vineyards have been damaged in the path of the war.
Children of Italy
(Children of Italy: Little girl in the picture has been se...)
One of Rodger's photographs taken after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen
1945The liberation of a Community Hidden in the Caves of Fleury-Sur-Orne
Eric Severard, Broadcasting during an Air-raid on Dover
Bachimbiri, Congo
Kikuyu Jury at the Trial of General China, Nyeri, Kenya
LIFE
Life
Life
Bari Schoolgirls at Village near Yei, Sudan
George Rodger married and had two sons, one of whom, Peter, became a filmmaker in Britain. He was the grandfather of Elliot Rodger, the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings in California, United States, where he killed six people and injured fourteen others before committing suicide.
(1991-2014)
