Record

Code	DS/UK/491
Person Name	Mohr; Jean (1925-2018); Photographer
Dates	1925-2018
Dates and Places	Born 13 September 1925, Geneva, Switzerland Studied Geneva Worked in Palestine, Jordan and the West Bank Studied in Paris Died 3 November 2018
Activity	After attending the Brechbühl school and the Collège de Genève in Geneva, Mohr studied economics and social sciences at the University of Geneva, where he developed lifelong passions as a member of the mountaineering and cinema clubs, and aspired to become a painter. After a brief stint in advertising after graduation, he volunteered with the International Red Cross. It was then that he began his life as a photographer, when in 1949, he was working with Palestinian refugees for the International Red Cross in Jordan and the West Bank. He went on to become well known for his photographic work with humanitarian organisations, and particularly with refugees, as well as his collaborations with the writer John Berger. On his return from Palestine in 1951, he went to study painting at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1955, he was involved in a scheme taking aerial photographs of farmland to be coloured by a girlfriend and sold on to farmers. When the business failed, he used the enlarger and two Leica cameras he was given in lieu of payment to set up as a professional photographer back in Geneva. Then in 1961, the English writer and artist John Berger moved to Geneva with his partner Anya Berger. Wanting to learn photography himself, Berger got in touch with Mohr via their mutual friend, the film director Alain Tanner. A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor (1967) began when Berger saw a project Mohr had undertaken for the WHO following the work of a Dr Rons in the mining community of Charleroi, in Wallonia, Belgium.
Published Works	John Berger, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor. [Text by John Berger, Photographs by Jean Mohr.] (London: Allen Lane the Penguin Press, 1967). John Berger, Sven Blomberg, and Jean Mohr, A Seventh Man: A Book of Images and Words about the Experience of Migrant Workers in Europe, A Pelican Original (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975). John Berger, Jean Mohr, and Nicolas Philibert, Another Way of Telling (London: Writers and Readers Publishing, 1982). Edward W. Said and Jean Mohr, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (London: Faber, 1986). Jean Mohr and John Berger, At the Edge of the World, Topographics (London: Reaktion, 1999). Issue 10 of Camerawork Journal, 1978 includes an article by Jean Mohr and John Berger, with photos from their 1975 book, ' A seventh man'. The book 'Photography/Politics 1', published by the Photography Workshop, 1979, also includes a joint article with them.
Relationships	Simone Turrettini, wife of Jean Mohr: 1956-2018
Source	Jean Mohr Obituary, The Guardian, 15 November 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/nov/15/jean-mohr-obituary Accessed May 2023