After the war Forman developed his interest in oriental art, contributing articles and photographs to the journal
Nový Orient (
New Orient). The subject of his first book was
Chinese art in Czech collections with a text by the editor of
Nový Orient, Lubor Hájek. It was published in 1954 not only in Czech but also with huge success in English and German by Artia, Prague's foreign language publishing house. Werner Forman's sensitive photography and his brother Bedřich's striking design made the book an international bestseller. To satisfy the unexpected demand it had to be reissued several times in both languages. Forman's photography impressed the Chinese authorities and in 1956 the brothers were invited to spend two months visiting museums and holding seminars for Chinese photographers. The Forman brothers were later invited to visit North Korea and Vietnam on similar missions. In 1962 the People's Art Publishing House in Beijing published a volume of 268 full-page photographs taken by Werner Forman in ten museums, with captions in Chinese, English and Russian. No sooner it was completed than the whole print run was destroyed following the fall from grace of the official responsible for the project. Only a few copies of the book remain. In the years that followed Artia produced forty Werner Forman volumes including monographs on five important collections in the British Museum, with texts by their curators. These were realised due to the commitment of the publisher
Paul Hamlyn, who found a ready market for the Forman books. Another such project was
Egyptian Art (1962), featuring the renowned collection of Cairo's Egyptian Museum. After the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968 Werner Forman made London his new base and he worked initially for
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. From the mid-seventies he edited for
Orbis Publishing a new series called
Echoes of the Ancient World. Fifteen volumes in all were published and repeatedly reissued in many languages, on subjects as varied as the Aztecs, T'ang China, the Vikings and the Maori. in 1992 his photographs enriched
The Life in Ancient Egypt by Eugen Strouhal, and in consequence the book was taken up by publishers in eleven countries and published in nine languages. Harvill Press published large photographic books called ''Werner Forman's New Zealand
(1994) and in Phoenix rising - United Arab Emirates: Past, Present and Future'' (1996). In 1997 an exhibition of Forman's photographs of Art in Ancient Egypt was mounted in the Prague National Museum. Having photographed in the course of his long career cultural monuments and artefacts in 55 countries, Werner Forman has left us an invaluable photographic archive. ==Books (selected)==