Mohinder Dhillon

DOB : 25-10-1931
Date of death: 09-03-2020
Lived For : 88 Years
Language : Punjabi
Star Sign : Scorpio
Gender : Male

Skills

» Cinematographer

Written By - Team Nettv4u

Mohinder Dhillon was a great Photographer, Photojournalist, and Cinematographer. He was born on 25 October 1931 in the small village of BabarPur, Punjab. His father with his family moved to British East Africa from steamship to Mombosa when Mohinder was sixteen years old. His struggle started at school, he learned all the lessons in Urdu, but in Nairobi, all the lessons were taught in English which took up his confidence and degraded his performance.

At the age of 20, his father gave him a Box Brownie camera, and within a short period, he got deeply involved in taking photographs. He started his career in photography from a small studio and soon was out in the field to shoot society events in Nairobi. In 1954, he took his studio and became a business owner and photographer. In 1959, he upgraded his profession to photojournalism and started submitting his photos to newspapers and the world.

Mohinder captured various photos like Internment camps of Kenyan Detainees, Independence Celebrations of East African Countries, The end of Aden and the birth of Yemen, documenting Idi Amin’s takeover and Rule of Uganda, the Final Days of the Solomonic dynasty of Ethiopia and the Establishment of African Unity. He has also done documentary projects such as Black Man's Land and No Easy Walk.

In 1985, Ethiopia's Famine photographs led the world to know the tragic condition of the country. His famous documentaries are Kenyatta, White Man’s Country, Lettow-Vorbeck, and Mau Mau. As a cinematographer, he has also worked for TV series and movies like Olympiad and Portrait of a Terrorist. For bringing the attention of the world to the critical issues of African society through photography, he got the award of Knight Commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Order of Saint Mary of Zion. He was known by the nickname Death-Wish Dhillon due to his fearless personality.