November 12, 2024

Jean Mohr, Photographer Who Found Heart Amid Bleakness, Dies at 93

Not all his pictures were of war zones and refugee camps; he documented a rehabilitation hospital in Laos, dissident artists in Moscow, a tour of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. Whatever the subject, the label “humanist” was invariably attached to him and his pictures; he had the ability to infuse an image with heart and respect.

“When he works with people, he becomes almost invisible,” Mr. Berger, the critic, essayist and novelist who died last year, once noted. “That is to say, after a few minutes, he is there, he is taking pictures and people (even people who are being photographed) do not know. And I believe that this gift — because it is a gift to John — comes because of an extraordinary discretion, a discretion that is related to how he can relate to others. So it gives people the opportunity to keep their own presence and their own soul.”

“The Photograph Photographed, Jerusalem,” 1979.CreditJean Mohr, via Musée de l’Elysée

Mr. Mohr collaborated with Mr. Berger on three books: “A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor” (1967); “A Seventh Man,” about migrant workers (1975); and “Another Way of Telling” (1982). All were praised for the intricacy of the collaboration.

“Jean Mohr’s defining characteristic — the one repeated by others, the one certainly in evidence every time I met him, and perhaps the one which made the eloquence of his photographs possible — was his humility,” Tom Overton, who has edited two books about Mr. Berger, said by email. “John Berger admitted himself somewhat less humble when he claimed the three books they worked on together ‘considerably extended the narrative dialogues that are possible between text and images in book form.’ Looking back now, they still haven’t really been surpassed.”

In 1986 Mr. Mohr was involved in a similar collaboration with Dr. Said, the literary scholar, called “After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives.”

“He saw us as we would have seen ourselves, at once inside and outside our world,” Dr. Said, an advocate of Palestinian independence who died in 2003, wrote in that book of Mr. Mohr’s photographs.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/08/obituaries/jean-mohr-dead.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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