dissertacao part 1

George Rodger: haunted by the light

“Poverty is no more surreal than wealth; a body clad in filthy rags is not more surreal than a principessa dressed for a ball or a pristine nude. What is surreal is the distance imposed, and bridged, by the photography: the social distance in time. Seen from the middle-class perspective of photography, celebrities are as intriguing as pariahs. Photographers need not have an ironic, intelligent attitude toward their stereotyped material. Pious, respectful fascination may do just as well, especially with the most conventional subjects”. (Sontag, 1979: 58)

In the reception of the University College for the Creative Arts in Maidstone there is an original print of Rodger’s champion of Korongo Nuba wrestling carried shoulder high. What does it mean for an institution to exhibit that picture to represent the University? This image is loaded with meaning and discourse of a problematic subject: the post-colonial imaginary of the African continent. In this essay I will discuss one photographer, George Rodger, that made a conscious decision to shift his subjective gaze from a body of work which recorded the horror and violence of war to the African continent ideal of ‘otherness’.

“Primitive it is true, but so much more hospitable, chivalrous and gracious than many of us that live in the 'dark continents' outside Africa” (Rodger, 1999: 112)

The reason Rodger changed his gaze to the Nuba tribe is partly due to the end of war. However it could be argued that the reason why he chose to undergo an anthropological trip to one of the most isolated tribes of Africa is that after his experience of the worst horrors that Western civilisation can produce during the second world war, the photographer searched for what he believed was, as he said in an interview, the “idyllic existence that you are so amazed to find” (Hill and Cooper, 2005: 62). I will textually analyse through Rodger’s images how this shift represents his ideal of ‘self’ and ‘other’, western society and oriental society, civilized people and primitive people; and how his photography approach changed between this two subjects.