After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives
Jean Mohr

In After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives (1986), Jean Mohr developed, together with the Palestinianintellectual Edward W. Said, a hybrid work situated between photobook, political essay, and reflection on representation. The project sought to convey the complexity of Palestinian lives beyond media images of conflict, through proximity, duration, and attention to everyday situations.

Mohr’s photographs—portraits, domestic scenes, fragmented urban landscapes, and spaces of waiting—form a restrained, almost quiet visual narrative. They avoid spectacle and instead focus on dignity, vulnerability, and the continuity of daily life under political and historical pressure. Each image operates as a fragment of memory and lived experience.

The dialogue with Said’s text is central: the photographs do not illustrate the writing, nor does the text simplycomment on the images. Rather, two autonomous yet interwoven registers emerge. Said reflects on identity, exile, belonging, and the Western construction of the “Middle East,” while Mohr develops a photographiclanguage grounded in encounter, attention, and an ethics of looking.

The book is now considered a landmark in the history of the contemporary photo-essay. It brings togetherdocumentary practice, critical thought, and visual memory, offering an alternative to dominant media representations of Palestine. Through this collaboration, Jean Mohr affirms photography as a space of dialogue—between disciplines, perspectives, and individual and collective histories.

Year of production: 1986

Preview Image: © Jean Mohr / Photo Elysée, Lausanne
Images 1 & 2: © Jean Mohr / Photo Elysée, Lausanne
Image 3: © ICRC/MOHR, Jean