dissertacao part 2

Walking nonchalant on a road of death

It could be argued that what made Rodger’s name as a recognizable photographer was, in part, due to the World War II pictures he took, especially those at the concentration camps in Bergen-Belsen. Rodger was the only British freelancer to travel to various battlegrounds covering the wars for the American Life magazine. In 1940 he covered the Blitz when the Germans finally attacked Britain. He then was sent to Africa and stayed for two years reporting the combats in that area. In 1944 Rodger followed the armies on to the liberation of Paris. After that, he pressed to Belgium until a he came across a small village called Belsen where he photographed the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Those are shocking and horrible pictures, and despite having photographed dead people during his trips around Africa and Europe, the experience at that concentration camp in Belgium would have an enormous impact on Rodger.

“Under the pine trees the scattered dead were lying not in their twos or threes or dozens, but in thousands. The living tore ragged clothing from the corpse to build fires, over which they boiled pine needles and roots for soup. Little children rested their heads against the stinking corpse of their mothers, too nearly dead themselves to cry” (Rodger, 1994: 96).

One of the most emblematic pictures of that event shows a child walking on a road unaware of the bodies in an advanced state of decomposition sidelined on the pavement. His face looks in the opposite direction of the corpses, as if in some way he is trying to ignore the human degradation that he has to live with every day. Everyday life, the trees and an innocent child walking becomes highlighted by the image composition of this road of death. This photograph is dispassionate and bucolic, bringing the disturbing aesthetics of normal life to the foreground? in a small village surrounded by the horrors of war. Those trees, the road, the boy and all other bucolic aspects are distressed by the corpses on the floor. Arguably, one of the reasons for which there is a constant demand for shocking elements in war pictures is the factor that these pictures help sell papers.

“The hunt for more dramatic (as they’re often described) images drives the photographic enterprise, and is part of the normality of a culture in which shock has become a leading stimulus of consumption and source of value” (Sontag 2004: 20).

This photograph accomplishes that because it grabs the attention of the viewer for its juxtaposition of a calm boy walking among a road full of rotten corpses. It is the undisturbed expression of the boy that is so shocking. The fact that in the caption is stated that this boy is Jewish makes this more horrific: the notion that he could have been among those dead bodies, or that his parents probably are.
Rodger, George (1956), Dutch Jewish boy walks through the camp, Belsen

Would it be possible to describe this scene with words and cause the same emotions as this picture? It is the juxtaposition of the nonchalant boy with the aligned corpses, the normal with the insane, and the notion that the photograph is the exact reproduction of a moment in time that redefines the memento value of this image and summons an abominable reality that cannot be described by words with such effect. This picture not only is a record of a moment in history but it also can be used to define that moment.
Its brutality and shock value are contrasted by the beautiful and pastoral scenario that merges all the components of the picture together, resulting in a very plastic, odd composition as a result of the competent craft of Rodger’s photography. Its nature is disquieting because the events that lead to this image are disquieting; our own knowledge of events that brought the holocaust. This photograph is evil and seductive, and for that characteristic is corruptive – it brings aesthetic accomplishment with a documentary of chaos, horror and madness on its most degenerate form.

“Photographs can and do distress. But the aestheticizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it” (Sontag 2002: 109).