The Family of Man Revisited

The Family of Man is the most widely seen exhibition in the history of photography. The book of the exhibition, still in print, is also the most commercially successful photobook ever published. First shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, the exhibition travelled throughout the United States and to forty-six countries, and was seen by over nine million people. Edward Steichen conceived, curated and designed the exhibition. He explained its subject as `the everydayness of life' and `the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world'. The exhibition was a statement against war and the conflicts and divisions that threatened a common future for humanity after 1945. The popular international response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Many critics, however, have dismissed the exhibition as a form of sentimental humanism unable to address the challenges of history, politics and cultural difference.This book revises the critical debate about The Family of Man, challenging in particular the legacy of Roland Barthes's influential account of the exhibition. The expert contributors explore new contexts for understanding Steichen's work and they undertake radically new analyses of the formal dynamics of the exhibition. Also presented are documents about the exhibition never before available in English. Commentaries by critical theorist Max Horkheimer and novelist Wolfgang Koeppen, letters from photographer August Sander, and a poetic sequence on the images by Polish poet Witold Wirpsza enable and encourage new critical reflections. A detailed survey of audience responses in Munich from 1955 allows a rare glimpse of what visitors thought about the exhibition. Today, when armed conflict, environmental catastrophe and economic inequality continue to threaten our future, it seems timely to revisit The Family of Man.

Gerd Hurm is Professor of American literature and Director of the Center for American Studies at the University of Trier, Germany. He has published widely in the fields of urban, media, and gender studies and he is currently researching the photography, aesthetics and curatorial politics of Edward Steichen. Anke Reitz is a photography curator at the Centre national de l'audiovisuel (CNA) in Luxembourg and is in charge of the CNA's Steichen Collections The Family of Man and The Bitter Years. Her current focus is on audiovisual arts, photographic history and conservation, as well as art mediation. Shamoon Zamir is Associate Professor of Literature and Visual Studies and Director of Akkasah: Center for Photography at New York University Abu Dhabi. He works on American literature, photography and intellectual history. He is the author of The Gift of the Face: Portraiture and Time in Edward S. Curtis's The North American Indian (2014) and co-editor of The Photobook (I.B. Tauris, 2012).