The School of Arts and Humanities
George Rodger was one of the greatest photographers of the last century. A founder, with Henri Cartier-Bresson and others, of the Magnum photo agency, Rodger was the epitomy of the ‘concerned’ photographer, the searcher after the image that conveyed the human story in its most compassionate form.
George Rodger – The Nuba will be displayed at the Richard Hamilton Building, School of Arts and Humanities, Headington Campus from Monday 17 October until Friday 28 October 2005. The exhibition will be opened by Jinx Rodger, widow of George Rodger at the Private View on Friday 14 October 6.30 – 8.30pm.
- For more information please contact Suzette Starmer on .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or phone 01865 484280
A screening of Rodger’s film ‘Kordofan’ will be held at the Old Fire Station, George Street, Oxford at 6pm on Sunday 23 October.
- For more information, please see the OXDOX website: http://www.oxdox.com or phone 07866 113593
As Martin Caiger-Smith observed in Magnum Opus:
‘In March 1948 Rodger left Cape Town with his first wife Cicely, on a two-year journey overland to Cairo. Their itinerary was unplanned; Rodger’s aim was to find settlements remote from colonial ‘civilisation’. It was in southern Sudan that he came closest to what he was seeking, and there that he produced some of his most striking and successful work – at the Latuka rainmaking ceremony and with the Bari tribe on the Ugandan border, with the Dinkas and, at Kordofan, with the Nubas. ‘Relying on his remarkable ability to gain acceptance, Rodger stayed with many of the communities for weeks, photographing, in his words, not exhaustively but ‘when something happened’.
His approach was neither dispassionate and anthropological, nor sensational. He portrayed what he found directly, in a manner which reflected his own genuine excitement and his instinctive sympathy and admiration for the people he encountered. He recognised in himself a strong bond with the people he met here, and needed no contrivance to heighten the already considerable drama of his subjects, no wide angles or bewildering close-ups – only the stark contrast afforded by the African light. Where possible he included in the image the environment of his subjects, to explain rather than mystify, to convey the unity of man with nature which he saw as his ideal, the real end of his quest. The best images from his journey appear as a climax to Rodger’s career, the closest expression of what he sought constantly in his travels, and strove for in his photography.’
EyeStorm have a good biography of George Rodger here
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04 Oct 2005 around 8am
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