Breaking: Extinct Tribe "photographs shed light on Sudan's Nuba and Latuka tribes

It is well established that the beautiful and beguiling black-and-white photographs made by George Rodger in 1948 and 1949 -- most famously of the indigenous people of the Nuba mountains, in the former central Sudanese province of Kordofan, and the Latuka and other tribes of southern Sudan -- are some of the most historically important and influential images taken in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century.

Not only do they represent an array of tribes who were thoroughly unique and steadfastly traditional in terms of their customs, costumes, architecture, agriculture, rituals and social gatherings, they also document these tribes' first authorized encounter with a Western photographer, as Rodger was granted official permission to photograph there by the Sudanese government itself.

Of course, Rodger was genuinely fascinated by the people and cultures he encountered, but as a founding member of the newly established Magnum Photos and an active contributor to the rapidly expanding international mass media at the time, he was also determined to fully convey and share his experiences of the Nuba with the rest of the world via the then dominant medium of photography.

Amongst a wide variety of interpretations, the photograph can -- and often has -- been too easily misconstrued as one situated within the longstanding colonial tradition of representing the people of Africa as "noble savages," as specimens of a "primitive" humanity untouched by "civilization."

Yet, it is important to recognize that directly prior to photographing the Nuba peoples, Rodger had spent the previous decade -- from 1939 to 1947 -- as a Second World War correspondent for Life magazine. In that time, he had covered the death and destruction experienced during the London Blitz, the brutality of the Burma campaign, the Allies' violent progress through Italy, and finally the horrific piles of corpses and desperately emaciated survivors discovered at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its liberation in 1945, as well as much more.