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The Family of Man
Edward Steichen; prologue by Carl Sandburg
*The Family of Man* is the book of one of the most famous photography exhibitions ever mounted—Edward Steichen's 1955 show at the Museum of Modern Art, which gathered 503 pictures from 68 countries into a single argument about the shared arc of human life. Birth, love, work, war, worship, death: the images are sequenced thematically so that a mother in one country rhymes with a mother half a world away, all in service of what Steichen called 'the essential oneness of mankind.' Carl Sandburg's prologue sets the tone in his plainspoken, hymn-like voice. The exhibition toured the globe for years to record crowds, and the book has never gone out of print. Later critics have questioned its sentimental universalism, but it remains a landmark of humanist photography and a genuinely moving object—small, dense, and quietly ambitious.
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The author
Edward Steichen was one of the towering figures of twentieth-century photography—pioneering art photographer, wartime image-maker, and, from 1947, director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art. The Family of Man was his crowning curatorial project. The prologue is by the poet Carl Sandburg, Steichen's brother-in-law, whose verse also supplied the exhibition's title.
The book
Published by MoMA to accompany the 1955 exhibition, it reproduces all 503 photographs Steichen selected from 68 countries, arranged not by author but by theme—the universal passages of birth, childhood, work, love, family, faith, war, and death. The show itself traveled the world for eight years, drawing record audiences; the catalogue distilled it into a pocketable, enduring form that has stayed continuously in print.
How it has aged
Its faith in a single human family reads as both its glory and its weakness. Critics—Roland Barthes most famously—faulted its sentimental universalism for smoothing over real historical and political difference. Yet the sequencing is masterful and the cumulative effect still lands, which is why it endures as the defining monument of postwar humanist photography.
For more context
Barthes's essay in Mythologies is the essential counter-reading; MoMA's own history situates the show in Cold War culture.
Sources - Wikipedia: The Family of Man - The Family of Man (Clervaux)
- Type
- Exhibition catalog
- Author / Maker
- Edward Steichen; prologue by Carl Sandburg
- Publisher
- The Museum of Modern Art
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1955
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Art
- Location
- Colorado