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Vintage silver print 25,2 x 20,1 cm (9.9 x 7.9 in) Photographer's agency stamp on the reverse, various numerical stamps and "Faim dans le monde, en Inde" press series stamp on the reverse, various notations in unknown hands on the reverse LITERATURE Helmut Gernsheim (ed.), Creative Photography: Aesthetic Trends, 1839-1960, Canada 1962, p. 223; Marco Bischof/René Burri (ed.), Werner Bischof 1916-1954, Boston 1990, p.101, Marco Bischof (ed.): Werner Bischof. Bilder, Bern 2006, p. 182 and 451. Werner Bischof, the photographer from Zurich who died at the age of 38 in an accident in the Andes in 1954, was and remains a myth; his search for the "valid" image from the focal points of world history was as essential during his lifetime as it is today. Although the Magnum photographer rejected the "superficiality and sensation-mongering" of magazines, he documented a famine in Bihar, India, in 1951 for Life (Issue 22, 1951) - equipped with a Rolleiflex and Leica. Bischof was overwhelmed by the misery and poverty he found; in a letter to his wife Rosellina, he described how the deplorable circumstances encouraged him to take pictures without inhibitions: "I drove with a government official to the villages. We brought rations of grain. But what can one jeep do in 5,000 square kilometres? Then I saw these starving women through the viewfinder of the Rolleiflex, and it was the first time I used the camera without inhibition. It was a most dramatic moment. It is not difficult to take good pictures at such a time, if one has a reasonable sense of composition." The most famous of these images is the black-andwhite photograph taken from a worm's-eye perspective. It shows a mother carrying her child in her arms, reaching out a hand, begging for help and food. It is an image of powerful symbolism, showing a Madonna. Despite external circumstances, Bischof's photographs always reveal his love for mankind. In him, aesthetic instinct, elementary, powerful design and humanitarian activism were joined in inner unity.