Werner Forman
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Werner Forman (13 January 1921, in Prague – 13 February 2010, in London) was a Czech photographer. In the course of a long career he amassed a visual record of many of the world's ancient civilizations and non-European cultures. Forman initiated almost all of the eighty books which were illustrated solely with his photographs. Devoted to ancient and mainly non-European civilizations, they were published in many languages.
Born in Prague on 13 January 1921, he committed himself to photography in his teens. During the German occupation in World War II he documented for the Resistance atrocities in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp. When in 1942 the Gestapo caught up with his group Forman evaded arrest by joining a trainload of young Czechs who had been conscripted to work in labor camp in Germany. There he later contracted scarlet fever and was transferred back to Prague where he slipped away again, only to be arrested with his brother, father and Jewish mother and sent to a concentration camp. At that time the men and woman were separated and, ironically, Forman’s mother was sent to Terezin, where she stayed until liberation. Forman is survived by his only child, Jofka Forman, who now lives in the United States, where she continues to work on Forman's legacy.
