Berger & Mohr

This morning the media is full of tributes to John Berger, and in particular his 4 episode TV series which I watched back in 1972, Ways of Seeing. You can now view these on Youtube (start with Part 1 and the links to the other parts will appear.)

But although I listened to a discussion about him on Radio 4 there was no  mention of his long collaboration with Swiss documentary photographer Jean Mohr, and in particular what is perhaps a rather better thought out book they produced together,  Another Way of Telling (1981), recently republished in a new and improved edition by Bloomsbury. You can read Berger’s essay ‘Appearances‘ photocopied from the 1982 US edition as a PDF online, but that misses the real feeling of the work, which needs to be taken as a whole.

Ways of Seeing‘ also came out as a Pelican original, and the book is rather better than the TV programme if you want to think about Berger’s work and ideas, which were not universally accepted. ‘Art-Language‘ in 1986 (Volume 4 Number 3 October 1978) was 123 pages of criticism of the book, much of it worthy of consideration.

Mohr’s first published collaboration with Berger was the book A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor, first published as a hardback in 1967 (I bought it a few years later) and re-issued by Canongate Books in 2015. The new edition, as Rick Poyner points out has the advantage of much improved modern reproduction (though the more detailed images are less dramatic), but in several respects its design unfortunately fails to match the sensitive work in the original by Gerald Cinamon, which contributed greatly to its success in combining photographs and text.

On Mohr’s web site – if you select  ‘Itinéraire’ (or ‘Route’ if you view the site in English) you can browse through the  content of his CD “Journey of a photographer Jean Mohr” published in 2000 by  l’Association Mémoires de Photographes. As well as 1200 photographs, there are also texts, videos, interview and more.

As well as the collaboration with Berger – other books include Art and Revolution, (1969) A Seventh Man, (1975) and At the Edge of the World, (1999) – Mohr is well known for his images of Palestinian refugees, which began with a commision for the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1949 and continues through the years – including another ICRC assignment in 2002. His After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986) includes a poetic meditation on Palestinian identity by the late Edward W. Said in response to his pictures.

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