A Seventh Man

Why does the Western world look to migrant laborers to perform the most menial tasks? What compels people to leave their homes and accept this humiliating situation? In A Seventh Man, John Berger and Jean Mohr come to grips with what it is to be a migrant worker - the material circumstances and the inner experience - and, in doing so, reveal how the migrant is not so much on the margins of modern life, but absolutely central to it. First published in 1975, this finely wrought exploration remains as urgent as ever, presenting a mode of living that pervades the countries of the West and yet is excluded from much of its culture.An account, through the photographs of Jean Mohr and the text of John Berger, of the gastarbeiter in Western Europe. This publication ties in the BBC's televising of a four part series, "Another Way of Telling: Views of Photography". The two have collaborated before on "A Fortunate Man".