Never-before-seen images from Nat Geo's epic Sahara road trip
A new book features the unpublished photos from the Magnum Photo co-founder's 1957 and 1958 expeditions through North and East Africa.
Few road trips on earth are as punishing as crossing the Sahara. Quicksand-like terrain can threaten to swallow vehicles. Extreme heat leaves travelers depleted. And rations shrink by the hour.
Photographer George Rodger knew the perils of the journey intimately well: He crossed the Sahara during World War II and returned with his wife Jinx in the 1950s as the Algerian War intensified. Together, they braved sandstorms and landmines to document the dramatic jagged Ahaggar Mountains and to meet the nomadic Tuareg people.
“The Sahara beckoned, as it does to anyone who has ever fallen under its spell. And so, naturally, [George] had to return,” Jinx wrote in a 1958 National Geographic feature recently put online.
The Rodgers made the expedition in their then-new Land Rover, a state-of-the-art station wagon they affectionately called Mzuri, which means “very good” in Swahili. Mzuri turned out to be more than a car—it became a companion for the couple as they drove over 4,000 miles in 90 days.
Mzuri is featured both prominently and subtly in George’s photographs—beside Jinx as she sets up camp, in the background as locals give directions, and framing the vast desert in its rearview mirror and front windshield.
Images of Mzuri against the Sahara’s rugged peaks inspired Portuguese photographer Ricardo Pessoa to embark on his own road trips throughout Africa. Later, after founding Coolnvintage, a Lisbon-based company committed to restoring Land-Rovers, Pessoa tracked down the Rodger estate to publish never-before-seen photos from the iconic 1957 trans-Saharan expedition and a 1958 safari through East Africa.
“For me, he’s my go-to reference of what photography is,” Pessoa says George, who co-founded Magnum Photo. “The way he sees the adventure and the road, we see the journey in the same way.”
The resulting book, Mzuri, pulls from the family’s personal archive with the car as the throughline in the couple's adventures. From the sweeping sand dunes to serene wildlife sanctuaries, the only noticeable difference in the classic vehicle’s appearance is a change in license plates. But Pessoa says it’s the car’s imperfect details that only an owner would notice and give classic vehicles like Mzuri character.
“You create a bond with the car, and at a certain point, it's just like a family member or a dog,” Pessoa says. “It's part of your life that you know its noises and its quirks, and why it doesn't start in the morning, and what you need to do when it doesn't operate.”
Pessoa hopes readers will be inspired by these unpublished photos from the adventures of George and Jinx Rodger and to get behind the wheel to rediscover a slower kind of adventure lost to a different time.
