Hello everyone, if you are following me for a while you would see my admiration for Magnum Photos. I have been writing about them and now the last part of the “Founders of the Magnum photos” series is George Rodger who is the last one of the “four”.
Let’s follow me to find out the interesting life story of the last man; George Rodger.
George Rodger
Rodger was born in Hale, Cheshire in 1908 to a Presbyterian Scottish family. His father, George Frederick Erc Rodger, was involved in the maritime and Lancashire cotton trade.
Between 1921 and 1925, Rodger studied at St. Bedes College. He got a job in the British Merchant Fleet at the age of 18, traveled the world twice by the age of 19 but hadn’t seen London yet.
George’s first ambition was to become a writer. He was able to sell a story that he wrote about the Gardens of Assam to the Baltimore Sun in 1928. However, the illustrations they published with his story angered George; He was portrayed absurdly, surrounded by snakes blocking his path in the forest. Therefore, he bought a camera to be able to view his next works himself.
Destiny, Fate, or Chance?
It was the years of the Great Depression in the world; George could not find the opportunity to print his new writings. He spent these tough years doing a variety of jobs from machinist to farming all over the United States. He returned to England in 1936 and got a job that determined the course of the rest of his life. He narrates this interesting recruitment story in his own words as follows;
“When I came back I wondered what the hell I could do and I saw an advertisement for a photographer for the BBC. I did up six or eight of my pictures as a portfolio and to my absolute amazement they took me on — and to my embarrassment, of course, because I knew nothing about it. I was provided with a studio with a lot of lights I was unable to operate and an awesome plate camera I had no idea how to load. Fortunately there was a little girl they gave me as an assistant and she’d been to the Bloomsbury School of Photography, which was the school of the day and she knew something about it, thank the Lord. We used to stay late after the BBC had closed down experimenting by taking each other’s pictures in the studio so I could get everything standardised – lights, exposure, time, temperature and so on – for taking portraits of the BBC’s guest speakers for The Listener. That’s how I started in photography.”
The Black Star
Rodger, who worked for the BBC between 1936 and 1938, later became unemployed upon the closure of his photography department and entered the Black Star photography agency.
The years in “Black Star” Photo Agency and being a war photojournalist at “Life”
The Black Star photo agency was founded in New York in 1935 by Kurt Safranski, Kurt Kornfeld and Ernest Mayer who fled Hitler’s Germany. As a photography agency, they were providing photo services to newspapers, including the New York Times, book publishers, industry and advertising sectors. However, the most profitable and prestigious of these
the customer was Life magazine.
Rodger’s photos have been featured on Tatler, Sketch, Bystander and Illustrated London News. However, Rodger’s photography career changed with the eight-page Blitz photos (“Blitz” is the name used for bombardment of the German air fleet over London during the Second World War) published in the Picture Post. These photos caught the attention of the editors of Life magazine, and thus Rodger began Life’s war photojournalist from 1939 to 1945.
After his Blitz work in London, Rodger first set out to Africa towards the end of 1940 to capture the struggle of De Gaulle’s independent forces against the Italians. He was planning to return in a week or two, but it would take him two years to return home.
First, Rodger landed in French Cameroon and reached the forces of De Gaulle in Chad and Kufra Oasis-Libya by traveling 4000 miles by land from French Cameroon. From there, he captured the struggles of allied powers in many African and Middle Eastern countries, including Eritrea, Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Egypt, Iran, and Jordan.
Indochina years
When he was in Cairo in 1942, he went to Rangoon-Burma upon a telegram he received from Life. He started working here by photographing the volunteer American Air Force (Flying Tigers) fighting alongside the Chinese against the Japanese. He recorded many different aspects of the struggle in Indochina; such as railways, important passages, and combat in tropical forests. He even had the opportunity to meet Chiang Kai-Shek and his wife while visiting the Burma-China road. Burma was divided in two; American and British forces were retreating. Rodger had to leave the country with other reporters, even crossing 300 miles of the road on foot. They finally reached the Calcutta train and were able to leave the country. He went to New York upon a telegram he received from Life in Calcutta.
By the way, 78 photos of him had been posted in Life, and that gave him a reputation that surprised him when he noticed. He was even asked by Life management to meet with important advertisers. For Rodger, a shy person, this was unbearable. He eventually managed to persuade the Life management to return to London to marry his longtime girlfriend Cicely. He stayed at his home until August 1943.
What happened then?
Returning to war and meeting with “a friend” who changed his life will be the next post’s subject ☺ until then, keep your curiosity and stay tuned ☺
Anıl Uzun
Note: In this blog post, I get help from the famous book of Russell Miller. If you want to take a look here is the info; Miller, Russell. Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History, Grove Pres, New York, 1997.