Contact Sheet

Werner Bischof, Priests walk through the Courtyard of the Meiji Temple, Tokyo, Japan 1951. Clothbound copy of Magnum Contact Sheets in presentation case, containing an individual contact sheet selected from a series of 10, in an edition of 50.

Werner Bischof (1916 –1954) was the first photographer to join Magnum after the founding members in 1949. He was born in Switzerland and his moving and poetic work received international recognition after the publication of his 1945 reportage on the devastation caused by the Second World War. Bischof travelled in Italy and Greece for Swiss Relief, an organisation dedicated to post-war reconstruction. In 1948 he photographed the Winter Olympics in St Moritz for Life magazine. After trips to Eastern Europe, Finland, Sweden and Denmark, he worked for Picture Post, The Observer, Illustrated and Epoca. He was sent to report on famine in India by Life magazine (1951) and he went on to work in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Indochina. The images from these reportages were used in major picture magazines throughout the world.

Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative of great diversity and distinction founded in 1947 by four pioneering photographers: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David Seymour. Today it is still owned by its photographer members, who with powerful individual vision, chronicle the world and interpret its peoples, events, issues and personalities.