George Rodger was a pioneering photographer who garnered worldwide recognition for his work and co-founded the Magnum agency with his friends Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
He had taught himself photography and after working for The Listener magazine, his photographs of the Blitz during World War Two brought him to the attention of Life magazine, where he was given a job as a war correspondent. He covered the war in West Africa, traveled to Iran, Burma, Sicily, and Salerno, and covered the Allies’ liberation of France, Belgium, and Holland.
After being traumatized by what he witnessed during the liberation of the death camps, he vowed never again to cover war and instead focused on traveling the world with his camera, specifically Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East.
His world-famous images of the tribes in Saharan and equatorial Africa were published in National Geographic as well as in other major magazines and newspapers across the globe.
His work hangs in major collections both private and national. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1993 and passed away in 1995. Since his passing, his work has been the subject of retrospectives in Tokyo, Paris, and London, including a retrospective at the Imperial War Museum North in 2008. His work has been included in photography exhibitions worldwide.
