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