John C. Cobb Photographic Collection, 1943-2004

This collection is arranged by medium into two series as follows: Series 1: Photographs and Series 2: Negatives.  The folders are arranged according to series and subseries, and alphabetically within each subdivision.

See the individual series descriptions for more information.

Dr. John C. “Jock” Cobb II was born in Boston, Massachusetts on July 8, 1919, to Dr. Stanley Cobb and Elizabeth Mason Cobb.  After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in astronomy in 1941, Cobb researched malaria at the Friends Service Committee in Mexico.  When the United States (U.S.) entered World War II in 1942, Cobb registered as a Conscientious Objector with the U.S. Draft Board and volunteered as an ambulance driver with the American Field Service (AFS), an ambulance organization serving with the British military overseas.    He arrived at Port Tewfik in the Middle East for training on October 31, 1942, and joined the British Eighth Army on February 26, 1942 in Syria.  Cobb was assigned to the Hadfield Spears Mobile Clinic and lived for five months in Selemiye before heading to North Africa and finally to Italy in October of 1943.  Cobb was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, Africa Star with the Eighth Army Clasp and the Italy Star for his service with AFS.

During the war, Cobb also served as an official platoon photographer for AFS.  He took photographs using a 35mm Voigtlander folding camera with a 50mm Tessar lens and a 35mm fixed-focus Argus automatic flash camera with a wide-angle lens.  He developed many of the photographs with a Kodak portable enlarger in the back of his ambulance, and sent them back to AFS headquarters in New York City for use in recruiting, fundraising, or exhibitions, though some were also developed after his repatriation to the United States on April 15, 1944. 

After his repatriation, Cobb married Holly Imlay-Franchot on July 27, 1946.  He received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and in 1954 received a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.  Throughout his career, Cobb worked  with the Indian Health Service in New Mexico, the Population Council in Pakistan, the World Health Organization in Tunisia, Indonesia, and Fiji, and also served as the first professor and Chairman of Preventive Medicine at the University of Colorado Medical School.  After retirement, he worked on the use of solar energy for pasteurizing water and treating human waste in less developed nations, and published a book entitled Fragments of Peace in a World at War: Photographs, Poetry, and Perspective (Animist Press, 2011) about his time with AFS during World War II.