Forman, Harrison, 1904-1978

Harrison Forman (June 15, 1904 – January 31, 1978) was an American photographer and journalist. He wrote for The New York Times and National Geographic. During World War II he reported from China and interviewed Mao Zedong. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Oriental Philosophy. Forman and his wife Sandra had a son, John, who later changed the spelling of his name to Foreman, and a daughter, Brenda-Lu Forman, who collaborated with her father on one of his books, and also wrote a series of children's books on given names. His collection of diaries and fifty thousand photographs are now at American Geographical Society Library at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Forman who travelled to the Tibetan Plateau in 1932 and filmed the Panchen Lama at the Labrang Monastery in Xiahe, Gansu province, served as the Tibetan technical expert on Frank Capra's Lost Horizon film of 1937.