But today he is part of a creative explosion in Chinese artistic photography characterised by its powerful political commentary which takes an often harsh look at the party and the social effects of its policies.
"I am not an ethnic Tibetan, but in the 1950s my father followed the call of the Communist Party, so I was born there," said Mo, a sage-like figure with his bald cranium and salt-and-pepper beard.
It is difficult to picture the frail, chain-smoking Mo, now 52, as a professional athlete, but for eight years he played football for a regional team based in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
Eventually, however, photography got into his blood and today his workshop is in an old conservatory near Caochangdi, an artists' village in eastern Beijing now under threat from the bulldozers amid plans to redevelop the area.
Galleries in Caochangdi are hosting until the end of June an exhibit on Chinese artistic photographers like Mo for "Arles in Beijing" - a variation on the famous photography festival held annually in Arles in the south of France.
While his intial works had a link with Tibet, Mo's later photos focus more on the Chinese cities he has lived in since, particularly Tianjin, a port close to Beijing.
Working in black and white, Mo often uses a blurred focus to symbolise the head-spinning social changes China has seen in more than 30 years of spectacular economic growth, often putting himself into the scene.
He also conceives installations, mixing his photographs with props as witnesses of an age gone by. One such display used the beds where workers slept during the mass collectivisation campaigns of Mao Zedong.
The most recent individual exhibition of his works, called "Me and My Surroundings", focused on the often wrenching economic and social changes in China since it began its gradual reopening to the world three decades ago.
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