The Controversial Family Of Man

THE CONTROVERSIAL FAMILY OF MAN

THE FAMILY OF MAN is a jolly good show, a statistical stopper, a box office success and for the critic proves how quickly the milk of human kindness turns to schmaltz. Two articles have appeared that between them give an accurate idea of the whole event. The one by Phoebe Lou Adams in the April issue of the ATLANTIC kids the daylights out of the sentimentality with which apparently any show must be loaded that is aimed at todays juke box and TV stunned public. The other by Edwin Rosskam in the March issue of ART NEWS excuses all the lapses of taste because he has caught the white hope of this show, to unite people, no matter how little, at a desperate time when separation may mean a crippling of civilization.

A variety of opinions are published here to give the persons who will not see the show the gist and guts of it and to point out where the areas of controversy lie.

PANORAMIC SHOW AT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

Jacob Deschin

A sweeping panorama of more than 500 photographs which symbolize the universality of basic human emotions as recorded by 257 photographers and representing incidents in sixty-eight countries, was opened at the Museum of Modern Art January 26th after more than two years of preparation under the direction of Edward Steichen, head of the museum’s department of photography. Wayne Miller, prominent young photographer, who took temporary leave of his profession to assist Mr. Steichen in the project, was chief assistant and leg man. The show occupies all the galleries on the second floor of the museum, where it will hang through May 8.

"An exhibition of creative photography, dedicated to the dignity of man,” the show is essentially a picture story to support a concept. Originated by Mr. Steichen about five years ago and started by him in 1952, it is based on the premise that, in matters of feeling, people everywhere on the globe behave in about the same way. To illustrate the point involved a search through two or three million pictures in this country and abroad. The final choice, narrowed down after many reshufflings from an initial selection of about 10,000 pictures, represents work both by well-known and unfamiliar names in photography.

• The show is an editorial achievement rather than an exhibition of photography in the usual sense. As editor, Mr. Steichen, with the help of Mr. Miller as picture researcher, dipped into every promising picture file for what it might contain that was relevant to the theme. The pictures speak for themselves, being identified merely by the photographer’s name and the country where the picture was taken. Thus, the photographer’s identity, though recognized, is kept subordinate.

Although Mr. Steichen picked the material as he needed it to tell his story, he says the show developed primarily out of the photographs, which gave substance to ideas, bringing out the theme with clarity, conviction and dramatic effect. As the work proceeded the pictures began to fall into groups of related statements, which became categories in the final plans for the display.

Each category bears a caption selected from world literature, research on which was done by Dorothy Norman. These enhance the symbolic atmosphere of the installation, which was designed by the architect Paul Rudolf, of whose contribution Mr. Steichen has said: "His imagination and ideas have not only carried out the idea of the Family of Man but added to it.” A printed "prologue” by Carl Sandburg, which is handed to visitors, captures the spirit of the show by introducing it as a moving record of "one big family hugging close to the ball of Earth for its life and being.”

• The exhibition is approached by the stairway and hall leading to the secondfloor galleries, and the visitor first encounters large photographs that set the mood of the event. The show itself begins with a section devoted to young lovers, then proceeds to groups dealing with tasks common to peoples all over the world—working the land, making bread, playing music and dancing, studying and learning. Similar activities in places separated by continental distances are intentionally juxtaposed to dramatize what Mr. Steichen calls "the essential oneness and goodness of man.”

This is a show mainly of relationships between people and of human experiences common throughout the world. Here are pictures in which, though language, custom and dress may differ widely, emotions are remarkably similar. Everywhere in the world, the pictures show play, gossip, work, do good and do evil. People show compassion, anger, the need for prayer.

• As the climax of the show there is a large color transparency in a blackpainted room which shows the explosion of a hydrogen bomb and raises questions about the future of humanity—represented in a series of faces and groups in adjoining galleries.

The exhibition closes on a gay display of pictures of children playing in China, Japan, Spain. These reaffirm the theme of hope that is epitomized throughout the show by recurring copies of a print of a cheerful piper. In this connection another happy feature of the exhibit is a group of twelve pictures showing children playing the universal game of Ring Around the Rosie in twelve different countries.

Courtesy of the NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, Jan. 30, 1933.

THE CAMERA VERSUS THE ARTIST

Aline B. Saarinen

The current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art packs a terrific emotional wallop. It is not a show of paintings but of photographs: Edward Steichen’s tremendous Family of Man exhibition, consisting of over 500 photographs of man’s moods from birth to death. Its impact is so forceful, in fact, that it raises a nudging question : has photography replaced painting as the great visual art of our time ?

Once the question is allowed admittance, instances come to mind that accelerate an affirmative answer. Which are the unforgettable images of our age? What more poignantly represents the nightmare of the atomic bomb than the photograph of the crying little girl alone in the desolate, bombed landscape of Nagasaki ? Is the fall of France more penetratingly etched on memory than in the photograph of the middle-aged bourgeois Parisian with tears streaking his face? And in this show, does not the photograph of the soldier saying good-bye to his little boy unveil a universal truth about war ?

More arguments rush forward to defend this young art form. Granting that all art is an expression of a response to life and a communication of emotion, is it not true that photography makes itself immediately intelligble and that its statement is undeniably universal ? Conversely, has painting not become so introverted, so personal, so intellectualized that it has lost both its emotion and its power of communication ?

The argument needs testing. Let us try a sobering question or two. Suppose one had to choose between saving the life work of the ten best painters and the ten best photographers of our time? One pauses. Picasso’s Guernica, Matisse’s La Danse come to mind. Horror of man’s inhumanity to man ; the apotheosis of joyousness. Mondrian ; Miro ; Leger. Surely one would have to save the work of the painters in such a choice.

They are the ones who have invented a whole way of seeing for our age. Their statements have irrevocably influenced our life. And no matter how debased and vulgar their color and form may have become in the ad and the automobile, their vision has directed almost everything we see and use. Moreover, through their work we are reminded, as in a Boromini church or a Beethoven symphony, of the dignity of man, for it is in his personal creativeness that he most triumphantly asserts this fact.

So, we must save the work of the ten great painters. But now suppose we had to choose between all the rest of the paintings of our time and all the rest of the photographs. The answer is easy. Let us save the photograph. For surely as against the mass of the painting, derivative or tentative, the photographs in this totality have a validity, a directness and a powerful statement that the paintings lack.

Suddenly the smoke clears. The answer is apparent. Painting is in our time, as it always has been in the hands of the giants, a great and strong means of expression. But photography is the marvelous, anonymous folk-art of our time. Test this further. Steichen made his show from over 2,500,000 prints that were submitted by professionals and amateurs in sixty-eight countries. Suppose the Museum had invited paintings on the same basis. The thought of what the 500 objects would look like is appalling!

This sort of speculation and the Steichen show make another point about painting and photography eminently clear. And that is the distinction about the two visual forms.

A painting, however realistic, is always an abstraction. A photograph, no matter how abstract, is always basically actual. The painter starts with an empty canvas and creates an image seen or imagined. The photographer starts with the finished image and creates by selectivity.

Recently, as Steichen points out, certain photographers borrowed the artist’s concept, playing upon form and fragment as an abstraction, submerging subject matter to composition.

One of the fascinating aspects of the Family of Man show is that it is composed almost entirely of those photographs which capitalize on the special and peculiar virtue of the camera: what Steichen calls "the swiftness of seeing.” The ability to fix an exact, transitory instant. This is photography at its purest best.

Conversely, one need think of how banal the moving photograph of the flagraising at Iwo Jima became when it was cast into bronze sculpture to see that plastic arts, too, are weakened when they trespass into the area of another medium.

That each of the art forms of painting and photography is most forcible and effective when it is truest to itself is perhaps the lesson of the Family of Man which painters should take most to heart. Let them not resent the fact that this folk-art, as all folk-art always is, is replete with easily assimilable emotional impact. Let them instead be reinforced by their conviction that they have no responsibility toward depicting appearance of the world or even finding the "hidden significance in a given text.” Theirs is the prerogative to invent and create the image and to write the text which conveys the significance.

But let them also be reminded by this exhibition that communication of emotion is at the basis of any art.

Courtesy of the NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, Feb. 6, 1955.

Now we can well ask what level of photographer will take up the kind of pictures found in the Family of Man. The suggestion has been made that it will encourage a new folk art in the world; one for the common man who will concern himself with the events of his everyday life. The touching example is drawn of the mother reaching for her camera as Billy races after sister with the butcher knife—snap, snap, replaces the camera on its shelf over the stove and phones for the MD. But there is need to worry about what the common man will do to the tradition that is embodied in the pictures of this show, by definition he can do no wrong. If the fate of the Photo-Secessionist movement is an example, it will be the hobbyist that will turn this powerful, magnificent all-dignity theme into drivel.

DOROTHY NORMAN

Editor, TWICE A YEAR PRESS

In answer to aperture’s request to write about Steichen’s Family of Man exhibit, I feel it may be of value to make a few observations concerning Steichen’s approach to photography, in relationship to that of Alfred Stieglitz, with whom I was associated for so many years.

When Steichen asked me to choose captions for his Museum of Modern Art exhibition, it so happened that I never before had worked with him. When I agreed to do so, various photographers asked me how I could work on an exhibit conceived and executed in a manner so different from that according to which Stieglitz had functioned. I welcome the opportunity to say something about this matter.

Certainly it is true that Stieglitz’s approach to photography differed in many important respects from that of Steichen. Stieglitz, for example, consistently opposed the practice of permitting anyone else to make one’s prints for one. In his later years he objected increasingly to the use of artificial light, as to any and all enlargements—especially to "insensitive” enlarging paper. He believed in contact printing, as in attempting to obtain the most supreme print quality possible. He disliked photographs that were retouched, manipulated, not sharp. He rebelled against exhibitions, as against photographs themselves, based on literary ideas; against what he called "sporadic” undertakings of any kind, preferring, as he phrased it, to "follow up”, as well as to "follow through”. He disapproved of reproductions not created with the utmost consideration for the "sense of touch” of the originals from which they were made. He became more and more fearful that insensitive reproductions tend to lead people away from, rather than toward, art. He maintained that "if you give people both the perfect and the imperfect together, they will choose the former, but if you give them the imperfect alone, there is a danger that they will be satisfied thereby.” (Although in his early years he gave much of his time to improving reproduction processes, in his later years he refused increasingly to permit his own work to be reproduced at all). And, as for the practice of making one’s prints for reproduction only, this was virtually inconceivable to him.

Thus it must be confessed at the very outset that almost everything to which Stieglitz most objected was done in one form or another in connection with the Family of Man exhibit. It is true, also, that Steichen quite frankly began to make many of his own prints specifically for reproduction in his later years, and that, having come to the conclusion that reproduction processes are here to stay, he decided that the most important thing was to see that these processes might be used as skillfully as possible, so that photographic reproductions might be seen by the greatest possible number of people (even when the quality achieved could in no sense satisfy a Stieglitz) .

Nevertheless, in considering the differences between the two men, it is important to remember that it was precisely Stieglitz who was the first to champion Steichen’s photography; that Stieglitz and Steichen both shifted their positions on any number of questions over the years ; that Stieglitz himself often admired work done according to the very "principles” he most disapproved (if the "spirit” of what was done was sympathetic to him, if it was alive, and if it represented a sincere protest against the academic or the already established), and finally we must remember that it is exceedingly dangerous to over-simplify one’s attitudes about art, or about life itself, in any manner that may tend to leave room in the world for only a single tradition.

Dorothy Norman

The fact is that, before their ways parted, Steichen and Stieglitz worked together harmoniously for a number of years, in spite of the differences that existed between them even at the very beginning. When he first discovered Steichen’s photographs, Stieglitz admired them enormously, praising them extravagantly. That Steichen happened to be a painter meant a great deal to Stieglitz in the early 1900’s, just because Steichen worked in an already accepted medium and therefore was recognized as a "bona fide artist.” It was precisely because a "painter” was ready to devote so much of his time to photography that Stieglitz hoped the world might begin to take the new medium seriously. Stieglitz and Steichen, together, through their early cooperation, not only greatly aided the "modern school of photography” to develop, but they were sensitive to and championed the best of modern art in other media, both at home and abroad, long before others in America either were ready to understand, or to buy it. That Stieglitz continued his fight alone, and that Steichen’s career led in other directions, does not cancel out the meaning of their early collaboration.

What is significant about Stieglitz, as about Steichen, is what each has done in his own right. Steichen himself has acknowledged that at certain periods of his life what he did failed to satisfy him. He had the courage to change his course, and that should be respected. It also is not at all important, for example, to attack Stieglitz because at one point he used a flashlight and then later he did not. It is of no significance whatever to quibble about the fact that although he came increasingly to dislike enlargements, he was the first in America to sponsor greatly enlarged prints made by Europeans at the turn of the century, and was himself an early advocate of making negatives with the express purpose of enlargement. (An early exponent of rarely using more than part of the original negative from which to make one’s final print, he was in time to become a confirmed enemy of relying upon any other moment in which to compose one’s final photograph than that during which one’s original negative is exposed within the camera itself.) It is irrelevant to criticize him for his latter day refusal to permit people to acquire his prints under almost any circumstances, just because he could write in 1921, "My idea is to achieve the ability to produce numberless prints from each negative, prints all significantly alive, yet indistinguishably alike, and to be able to circulate them at a price not higher than that of a popular magazine or even that of a daily paper.”

Originally a violent enemy of the "hand camera,” Stieglitz soon thereafter was to write that he could not "too strongly recommend” its trial. Although, in later years, he frowned upon those who "travel about” in order to photograph, maintaining that one can do one’s best work by remaining wherever one happens to be at any given moment, and coming to know—that is, to see with true insight—what is directly before one, in his earlier years he himself travelled widely, photographing wherever he went. Initially an ardent seeker of prizes in photographic competitions held throughout the world, he soon was to fight the very idea of giving prizes at all. Generally considered an arch opponent of any kind of manipulation of prints, he could write of platinum paper in 1892: "By being able to use developers of varied strength, a new field of development has been opened to us. We are enabled to paint out the picture—that is, we can develop by means of brushes, soaked with developers of varied strength, and so force out certain parts of the print, while keeping out others.” To which he added: "This, of course, can only be done by those who have some training in drawing,” a statement he certainly would not have backed up in later years, and one that is particularly strange coming from him at all, since he prided himself that, from the very beginning, he never retouched his own work. In fact, he wrote in 1934: "Personally, I like my photography straight, unmanipulated, void of all tricks ; a print not looking like anything but a photograph, living through its own inherent qualities, and revealing its own spirit” ; plus a postscript in 1937: "I not only still subscribe to that opinion, but am positive I’ll never change it.” Which he never did. (Steichen, it should be noted, by the way, in a catalogue for his 1902 exhibition, stated, also, with pride, that his own prints were "unmanipulated, unretouched”.)

When confronted by the charge that he was "full of contradictions,” Stieglitz invariably would reply, "There are contradictions in everyone truly alive. But contradictions in those truly alive are not, in reality, contradictions at all, if seen in proper relationship to life itself. It is literalness that is contrary to life. Any conclusion is to me a dead thing—unaesthetic, a tombstone. Where there are no contradictions, there is no life.”

Whatever the differences between the two men, then, I can only say that, whatever reservations I may have about one or another photograph in the Family of Man exhibition, or about one or another aspect of its presentation, I respected enormously the "idea” on which the exhibition was based, and the passion with which Steichen "lived” what he was attempting to create all day, and far into the night, selflessly, devotedly. He took endless pains to have everything just right—photographs, captions, relationships.

I found that in choosing captions, the great and universal words of the great writers of all times were applicable to the various panels having to do with creation, birth, love, work, death, justice, the search for knowledge, relationships— both personal and seemingly impersonal—democracy, peace, opposition to brutality and slaughter—to all of the basic themes with which the exhibition is concerned.

As I observed Steichen, worked with him, I realized that he was not, in reality, simply attempting to put on an "exhibition.” He was attempting to project his own vision of life, by working through and with others. He had a passionate concern with helping to explain, as he described it, "man to man across the world, his dreams and aspirations.”

To work with Stieglitz was, after all, to concentrate on the individual artist ; his evolution, his special vision. Stieglitz was interested in the audience, too, in terms of individuals; in terms of each individual who came before art in his presence. He cared about what people are ready to do in relationship to what they say they feel before art. Also about what they do of their volition in behalf of the artists about whom they claim to care. He challenged the individual to see for himself, feel for himself. He said always that what he cared about was man —each man as individual—not about mankind in terms of the abstract "masses.” Stieglitz ever challenged any too glib use of such slogans as "one world”, "democracy”, "peace.” He felt that unless one lives in one’s own daily life that about which one proclaims to care, or about which one preaches, one has no right to make claims in terms of mere ideas or theories. Steichen, on the other hand, may be said to concentrate on mankind ; on the universals that bind men together; on exhorting men to build a better world, even if they do not thoroughly achieve whatever goals they may set for themselves.

To work with Stieglitz was to work as with a private, lyric poet ; with Steichen, a public leader—-a conductor of an orchestra. Stieglitz used the work of other artists as what he called "a point of contact” between himself and other individuals. Steichen uses other people’s art as an instrument through which to forge a composite statement that may be made available as widely as possible. One must be quite clear about the different objectives of the two men, as well as about the differences between their ways of functioning.

I happened to be present when Steichen visited Stieglitz just a few weeks before the death of the latter. The two men embraced one another with vast tenderness. I made unposed snapshots of them as they looked at John Marin’s paintings, which Steichen had not seen for some years. (It was Steichen who originally had introduced Marin and his paintings to Stieglitz as long ago as 1909.) Stieglitz was as happy to see Steichen as Steichen to see Stieglitz. To be sure, there were reasons why the two men had drifted apart. But, in the final analysis, what was important to both of them as they met again were the positive things they had done either together or separately ; were the reasons why each had complemented the particular talent of the other, during an important period in both of their lives.

I could not help but think, as I saw the two men together, of Stieglitz’s delight in the anecdote about Schiller, who, when asked whether he preferred Goethe or Heine, replied simply, "You ought to be glad you have two such men.”

The real question at stake being: is there not room for both traditions—that of Steichen and that of Stieglitz—plus every other approach that is alive, adds, has integrity, rings true ? Do not all possible living approaches challenge, stimulate, enrich one another ?Is it not inevitable that all should be in the world ? Is not the important thing that, in whichever tradition one happens to belong, one’s task is essentially to see that whatever one does is carried out in the most selfless, most dedicated, most creative fashion. To waste time quarreling over which tradition totally should displace the other can be of no value. To work with integrity for ever greater quality ; to deepen and broaden one’s vision ; to make the work of the artist increasingly available for all, without sacrificing the sense of touch; to bring all men closer to one another—all such aims are in themselves noble and desirable.

In one sense, the Family of Man exhibit is more related to the motion picture tradition than to that of Stieglitz—Steichen having functioned as a kind of director. Or, in another sense, as many who have seen the exhibition have observed, it is not "photography” at all of which people think, as they walk before the pictures, but of what is being communicated (by way, of course, of the sensibility of the photographer, plus the manner of presentation). What is communicated, it so happens, shakes people to such an extent that, almost paradoxically, it makes them feel as though they were being confronted by some new aspect of photography, even if, in truth, this is not at all the point of what is happening to them. Which, again, somewhat paradoxically, reminds one of Stieglitz’s own dictum that "if the photographer concentrates on communicating his own vision—as on his craft as a photographer—then photography will take care of itself.”

It is interesting that, for the first time, visitors to the Museum of Modern Art have been moved to go to officials voluntarily, and give even very modest donations, because of the emotional impact of the exhibition. They express the desire to have more exhibitions with the power to "touch” people, to say something universal and compelling that unites people; makes them feel they belong something beyond themselves—beyond their own culture or own nation. They express the desire to help in behalf of bringing the "family of man” closer together in actual life.

That Stieglitz helped people to challenge themselves ; to test their own acts, should in no sense be incompatible with becoming increasingly aware about, and more responsible toward "the family of man”—no matter how imperfectly.

The one thing that cannot be held against the Steichen exhibition is that it is not in the "purist” tradition of Stieglitz. It does not pretend to be. It must be judged according to its own merits ; for its own lacunae. It cannot be judged for what it is not.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ADDENDA

This bibliography and quotations were selected from an extensive list generously supplied by the Museum of Modern Art’s Publicity Department.

NEWSPAPERS—Advance (All dates are 1955 except as noted)

FORT WAYNE NEWS-SENTINEL, 1 April 54. "One of the most ambitious exhibitions ever attempted by any art museum . . .’’ ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 23 May 54. DETROIT NEWS, 26 Dec. 54. NEW YORK TIMES, 12 Dec. 54. NEW YORK SUNDAY NEWS, 12 Dec. 54. NEW YORK DAILY MIRROR, 23 Jan. 55. NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE SECTION, 23 Jan. "The most elaborate photographic layout in history will go on display this Wednesday at the Museum of Modern Art.”

NEWSPAPERS—Coverage

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 25 Jan. SAN DIEGO UNION, 27 Feb. "Here is a Whitmanesque catalogue of man’s activities and relationships. The universal becomes clear ín the individual and in the particular.” NEW BRITAIN HERALD, 1 March. "So vivid and real are the works that the visitor is quickly a part of the life being shown.” LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL, 6 Feb. THE BALTIMORE NEWS-POST, 27 Jan. ANNAPOLIS EVENING CAPITAL, 26 Feb. BALTIMORE MORNING SUN, 6 March. "It is the propaganda that reveals the universal in man . . .” ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH, 6 Feb. THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, 27 Jan. SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN, 30 Jan. PATERSON MORNING CALL, 28 Jan. "The exhibition is one of breath taking beauty, action, life. . . . We say without hesitation that this picture exhibition of creative photography is the greatest up to now.” NEWARK NEWS, 20 Feb. NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 23, 25 Jan. ; 30 Jan. "It can truly be said that with this show, photography has come of age as a medium of expression and as an art form.” NEW YORK TIMES, 23, 24, 25 Jan.; 30 Jan. contains the Jacob Deschin article reprinted in full on pages 8-9. 31 Jan., 6 Feb. contains the article by Aline B. Saarinen reprinted in full on pages 10-11. And this quote from a letter by Ben Shann, "The public is impatient for some exercise of its faculties: it is hungry for thinking, for feeling, for real experience: it is eager for some new philosophical outlook, for new kinds of truth: it wants contacts with live minds ... it wants to live. In past times all this has been largely the function of art. If art today repudiates this role can we wonder that the public turns to photography?” Other notices on 12 Feb., 7 and 16 March. NEW YORK DAILY MIRROR, 25 Jan. Quotes from Mr. Rockefeller’s and Mr. Sandburg’s talks at the private preview. NEW YORK JOURNAL-AMERICAN, 26 Jan. NEW YORK WORLD-TELEGRAM & SUN, 3 Feb. JAMAICA LONG ISLAND PRESS, 6 Feb. SYRACUSE POST STANDARD, 13 Feb. NEWBURGH NEWS, 15 Feb.

ROCKY MOUNT TELEGRAM, 6 Feb. PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, 20 Feb. "The whole story of mankind is written in this ambitious exploration of photography as a dynamic language of communication among peoples.” SPOKANE CHRONICLE, 10 Feb. As of March 28th some 25 "mentions” had been made by various papers, other than the longer pieces listed above.

SYNDICATED—Advance RICHARD correll—Associated Press. IRVING desfor—"Camera News”. ROBERT L. peterson—University of Illinois.

SYNDICATED—Coverage ELEANOR Roosevelt—"My Day”. "I could not, however, have enjoyed anything more than I did the first impact of the collection of photographs. ...” N. B. C.-TV-—"Elder Wise Men”. "Steichen is crowning his life work with a Family of Man exhibition. . . .” MEYER levin—"I Cover Culture”. ". . . the most wonderful exhibit I have seen in 30 years of museum trotting . . . No painting exhibit was ever so exciting.” IRVING desfor—Associated Press. "Photography’s role as a universal language is impressively demonstrated ...” PAÚL MOCSANYi—United Press. An account of the private preview.

Some 16 Foreign papers and magazines gave advance notices and requests for photographs and reviews of the show. The complete list is available from the Museum of Modern Art Publicity Department.

MAGAZINES (all in 1955) METROPOLITAN HOST, 29 Jan. NEWSWEEK, 31 Jan. LIFE, 14 Feb. ". . . we salute both the difficult task and its successful result.” u. s. CAMERA, Feb. issue carried a long and glowing report well illustrated. ART NEWS, Feb. issue. Edwin Rosskam’s comprehensive review. PARK AVENUE SOCIAL REVIEW, Feb. issue. MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY, March issue carried a long and well illustrated article. "It does not hang limply on a wall inviting technical criticism. It attempts much more important things. It wants to show people of one land that people of others are really not as different as they may seem.” CHARM, March issue. ATTRACTIONS, March issue. YOUNG ADULTS GROUP ETHICAL REPORTER, March issue. PARENT’S MAGAZINE, March and April issues. CONGRESS WEEKLY, 7 March. "The Museum of Modern Art has repeatedly proved that photography can be an art, but never as convincingly as in the huge show . . .” ATLANTIC, April issue. The Phoebe Lou Adams minority report. VOGUE, January issue. IMAGE, March issue. Abandoned its usual historical perspective for an enthusiastic salute to Steichen. INFINITY, Dec. 54-Jan. 55 issue contains a brief biography of Steichen, a dramatic story of how the show was made and a cover picture of Steichen with his head against the wall which they didn’t need to title "Because it feels so good when I stop.” POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY, April issue. A minority report in the letters to the editor columns and a set of installation photographs.

NEW YORK TIMES, 8 May 1955. Jacob Deschin on the last day of the show gave attendance figures as in excess of 270,000 in a 103 day period. Only the "Italian Masters” show in 1940 exceeded it with 290,888 visitors in 72 days. He further said, "Even if the show did nothing else than achieve this response to a medium which can be, above all mediums, the most articulate form of visual communication to the man in the street, it was remarkably successful.”

TOUR SCHEDULE FOR "THE FAMILY OF MAN".

Minneapolis Museum of Art, 21 June—4 September. Dallas Museum of Art, 7 October— 18 November. Cleveland Museum, 24 January—5 March 1956. Philadelphia Museum, 25 March—29 April 1956. Duplicates of the show will tour Europe and Asia by the United States Information Agency starting in 1956.

ONE FAMILY'S OPINION

by George and Cora Wright, Editors & Writers.

NOTE: This is a fairly faithful account of an actual conversation, "re-enacted” the following day on two typewriters, and considerably abridged—particularly the exasperations at the other’s obtuseness to self evident truth after one a.m.

George I’m not sure. Nobody likes the show—nobody, that is, except the great big old public. Did you see that mob there today ? I think I’ll play Devil’s Advocate and defend the show, even though some of the criticism raises pretty valid points. You’ve heard the same things I have.

Cora Well, the show wasn’t meant for you and men and other people who live with photography. It was meant for the general public and, as you say, they like it. I come out of it feeling overwhelmed each time, too.

George That’s my experience. Some of the gimmicks annoy me—I wish Steichen and Miller had hung the show themselves instead of depending on an interior decorator. But Steichen has certainly done exactly what he gave notice he was going to do. And the public loves it. Just ask the museum guards.

Cora Yes, that’s so. But some photographers blow their tops when you mention the show to them. They feel that a photographer’s own statement should be strong enough to stand alone and they resent having prints used as the elements in someone else’s statement. And look how Phoebe Lou Adams shredded the theme of the show in THE ATLANTIC! Can you bring all these things out in a short article ?

George I think there are matters more important than the Steichen-Sandburg theme, examined on its own terms. I think there’s a more basic point: is it the function of a museum to hang a show which documents a particular social theme no matter how valid that theme is? Even if "men are all men,” shouldn’t a museum use its space to educate the public about photography as it does about the other arts ? In other words, much of the criticism seems to me to hang on this: a museum has the function of demonstrating that a photograph is more than a mechanical slice of space-time. It has an intrinsic value beyond the facts it happens to record. Isn’t this the real crux of the matter?

Cora Aren’t you saying that the Museum of Modern Art is being truly "modern ?” The show’s like a magazine essay. It’s a contemporary use of photography. So hanging this type of exhibit is one function of a modern museum—in line with their displays of latest design of automobiles and furniture ?

George I didn’t mean it that way at all. I meant that museums have usually hung photographs as separate prints or small groups of prints as if they had the same values as drawings or etchings. I hadn’t thought of the other parallel. Perhaps photographs should be shown in action, working on the minds of people. Chairs are shown working on their other end, as well as being attractive objects in furnishing a room.

Cora I’ll sit that one out.—But about the theme-technique—many people agree that this is one way to hang a photographic show, but they don’t like the subordinate role in which it places the creator of the individual photograph. The men who took the picture had something to express about the scene before him. He said it as strongly as he could. In the case of men like Eugene Smith these individual subjective statements have an independent strength which is dissipated when prints are separated out and recombined. Is it legitimate, some critics ask, to overlook these powerful expressions and use individual photos only as bricks to build up a different theme ? Personally, I think it is, sometimes. But not with the highly personal type of photographic statement which, in its intensity, is akin to the finest painting.

George This is getting back to what I meant to say before. Certainly the photographer as a creative individual is subordinated in this show. Perhaps the two aspects—the photographer making his complete statement and Steichen making his point—could have been combined if the show had been made from units of picture-stories or groups of related pictures, each built by a single great photographer. If the unit had been, say, Gene Smith’s whole Midwife story rather than the one shot of her compassionate hand pulled out and grouped with several other hands in similar gestures. Technically, it would have been tricky to set up such an exhibit—but it might have gotten across a deeper and truer glimpse of reality. Well, I start out to defend the show and now I suggest a different exhibit entirely !

Cora I’m stuck, too—with mixed feelings about what has been done. First, there’s the point of view that any show is worthwhile which presents fine photographs to the public. If the only way to get them to come down in droves is to use a theme, that’s justified. Nagging at me on the other side is the fact that this really has nothing to do with creative photography as I see it.

George That’s why I suggest that the "indivisible unit” may be the picture-story or a theme-group as seen by a single photographer. There are exceptions, of course—especially when a single print is seen isolated. Shuffled into the deck, the individual perception is blurred. Any really great photographer, like a great painter, creates his own visual universe. In a different way in the two arts, of course. Tou can distinguish a Gene Smith from a Cartier-Bresson without a signature. 'ïou can instantly recognize an Adams, a Weston, a Laughlin print, or that of any mature worker whose previous work you’ve seen. They are all pointing lenses at the same universe but each selects the area or aspect which is most real to him. When we see a group of pictures made by one of these men, we enter his subjective world to look at reality through his eyes. But mixed up with others in a show, he surrenders this individuality—just as a writer might if he gave permission for single paragraphs to be quoted by an editor in any sequence and in any context.

Cora ’Vou mean, a single print identifies the photographer to us, but not to the general public? Since we handle pictures all the time, we can isolate many pictures in the show and unconsciously supply our own knowledge of the photographer’s emotional context?

George. Precisely. Maybe all these multiple contexts are why the show confuses us !

Cora Isn’t it strange how you can always raise an argument in photographic circles with the innocent question, "Have you seen the Family of Man show?” I think part of the Donnybrook comes from a lack of definition of terms. Pretty generally, there’s a clear separation between commercial art and personal, creative painting. It’s not that simple in photography—the two often overlap.

George Painters get fouled up with this, too, I understand. This comes up every time we talk with a young photographer. Should he work for hamburgers today or for pie in the sky? There certainly are photographers who are creative and earn their living by being so. But there aren’t enough opportunities yet because even photo editors don’t always rcognize the creative from the routine. Here is the crux of all the criticism, isn’t it : should Steichen be announcing to the public that all men are brothers, or should he be educating it that photographers, like painters, have powerful, individual, personal statements to make ?

Cora That’s just what I mean. The Museum doesn’t use paintings in the same way—select 400 canvasses to show a single theme. Why should photography be treated differently ? Or is this a hangover from the old, ingrained idea that only the painter is truly creative while the photograph-maker, camera in hand, is just a selector who records? It’s the old "you push the button” idea, with somebody else doing the rest.

George Exactly. I doubt that photographers would question the basic thinking behind the show if it had been designed for the lobby of the U. N. building. But in the Museum, with its tremendous prestige, it becomes a model for other museum shows. It’s a step toward really making photography into what Aline Saarinen thinks it is now—completely anonymous folk-art. Personally, in this discussion, I don’t think it matters whether the theme as such has any meaning or not.

Cora Wait a minute ! One reason that the show is breaking museum attendance records is because the theme has meaning for most people. So the theme of a show does count. But, as you say, the important thing is how should the Museum be handling photography? As a collective or an individual unit? If both, as I believe, that puts any museum squarely in the middle—obligated to present both aspects in any show of this size and importance.

George I can’t agree with that. This is becoming the Century of the all-toodamned-Common Man. The collective aspect of photography is adequately enough represented in the magazines. That’s all the public sees. The photographer will never become a culture-hero, certainly, but should a museum also leave him faceless ? An artist develops in part by exposing his work to others, the public and his fellow creators, taking their criticism, giving it his own evaluation and going on from there. Museums no longer consider themselves as community attics, but as educational institutions. They can educate in both directions : help the creative photographer as an individual by giving him some chance to show a reasonable sample of what he is doing, and educate the public simultaneously that photography is more than a way of telling an editor’s story effectively—educating them that it is a strong medium of personal communication and expression. Many people understand modern painting today, just because the Museum of Modern Art has done this educational job so effectively for them over the last 25 years.

Cora Is that what you’re going to write for aperture?

George That piece is still hanging over me, isn’t it? I’ve delayed writing it this long, because I don’t know what I should say in print about the show. Despite every criticism we’ve heard, a walk through the show is still impressive. It may convince a thousand people that photography is more than a snapshot or a factual record picture. If it does that, alone, it could stand for a hundred things I don’t believe in and I’d still be happy that it was put together. And if it accomplished nothing but to stir up the sort of controversy we have heard in the field —that, too, would make it valuable. I’m only sorry I can’t wait ten years to write this piece—my hind-sight has always been a remarkable 20/20.

A month after the show opened we talked to Steichen about the exhibit. Sitting in his office listening to his answers to our questions it became clear that he does not consider this show representative of photography as an art. He calls the three dimensional editorializing a medium. It also became clear that if he believes the show includes some of the best work that photographers of people can do today, he also believes that there is plenty of room for improvement. He said that looking at millions of photographs convinced him that photographers, when they work with people at least, "still do not come close enough.” He feels that the communicative potential of the medium of photography has barely been scratched. He used the word "snapshot” in reference to some of the photographs and excused their presence in the show because he had uniformly picked only what he needed for the purpose of his theme.

PUBLICATION

A de luxe edition at $10 on this show and a paper bound one at $1.00 were published in May. Steichen wrote the following for the introduction of the books:

THE EXHIBITION, NOW PERMANENTLY PRESENTED ON THE PAGES OF THIS BOOK DEMONSTRATES THAT THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY IS A DYNAMIC PROCESS OF GIVING FORM TO IDEAS AND OF EXPLAINING MAN TO MAN.

The ideal department head of a museum would be expected to take a larger view of the art of photography.

THE THEME SHOW: A Contemporary Exhibition Technique

by Barbara Morgan, photographer, writer and book designer.

Watching the faces of spectators as they scan the faces in photographs from Brazil, Bechuanaland, China, the USA, one feels that something akin to spiritual exploration is in the air; one is aware that a sense of human wholeness, deeply craved, is being supplied by Steichen's Family of Man.

Here one is instantly conscious that this is no orthodox show of "exhibition prints” hung salon-wise. It is something for which we need a new term. Something as crisp as "movies” or "TV” to indicate photographs used as units in a whole and a whole that induces its own experience in the spectator. Several have been suggested, "photographic-mosaic,” "three-dimensional editorializing,” "movie of stills,” yet they all fail—too cumbersome—not accurate enough. The term "theme show” seems to be the best so far for what is actually a familiar technique. This technique of exhibition carried as it is by Steichen to new intensities of poignancy, warmth and wisdom is no longer a mere technique, but a full-fledged medium of expression. A medium in which the creator can be as eloquent and forceful as he can in words, or music or in other visual images. Steichen so considers it ; and in his own way has developed the stature of this medium which picture editors and show designers practice every day. He has popularized the hard work, the long hours, the tedious search, the giving over of the self to the life that develops of its own accord in a group of photographs, and the final shaping of that life to the will of the designer. This medium is so potent that I would like to consider it at length.

RELATION TO OTHER MEDIA

This thematic medium has some kinship to cinema and the photographic book. All three techniques are based on sequences of interrelated pictures, tensioned to an informing idea. In movies the audience is still and the pictures move ; the book reader is still and the pages turn. Here pictures are still and the viewers pass before them. Yet this beggars the case, for scale and arrangement give illusion of movement: large pictures seeming to advance, the small to retreat ; grouping of several photographs into small constellations build up a meaning, and as the spectator grasps the meaning of one group he can relate it to the meaning of other constellations. This interplay gives the sense of movement to his mind. Like voices of a fugue, one thematic group can answer another group. Continuing the comparison to music, layout can produce a kind of orchestration, and this orchestration can be richly enjoyed by those accustomed to relating groups of photographs, both as to meaning and their elements of form such as line, tone values, lighting — and texture.

This picture-sequence medium is also related to journalism and the newspaper use of headlines, subheads and body of text. In this case quotations from the bibles of the world perform as headlines to introduce and spark the continuing picture themes. The method is particularly effective in carrying messages to a wide variety of persons. Those that hurry thru can not mistake the idea, those that wish to experience the fullest detail are given that opportunity. The method also applies to the individual constellations of photographs where several are grouped around a hub. If the group were reduced to the core photograph the idea would still be fully stated.

During several visits to the Family of Man I watched the seeing patterns of the audience. Most picture-by-picture viewers never stepped back to see a group as a whole, or scanned for a total effect. Such persons were probably the victims of the orthodox exhibition where pictures must be seen one at a time as if isolated in a world of its own. Here they may well have missed carrying the memory of one photograph on to the visual image of the next. Yet the organization of flexible galleries and connecting spaces allows the audience to flow at its own speed. It is actually no captive audience, for viewers can mull, amble, bypass or sit ; yet there is forward pulse of dramatic progression. Many viewers were observed to find evident pleasure in shifting a few feet to discover an unsuspected visual interaction ; since they were aware of both individual picture and relatedness of group they experienced no little excitement in turning a corner to a fresh theme. For both kinds of viewers the life-around-trek through the show is an emotionally exhausting experience, and time is needed to assimilate the compassionate paradoxes of the message, to study the form of its dramatic unfoldment.

INFLUENCE OF ARCHITECTURAL SHAPE

Finally the medium is related to architecture and to layout. Things happen to mind and feeling when the body moves in space; reciprocally, space influences movement and feeling. Obviously open spaces suggest freedom, a tunnel tends to claustrophobia; a square cell suggests regimentation. Here the progression of architectural forms and spaces have been carefully designed to further the meaning. The Birth bower is an open-sided circle suggesting emerging from the womb, The Death theme uses an open-topped tunnel, the rooms that lead to the H-Bomb are three sided cells, Religion and awakening Love are carried on running walls and a corridor, in keeping with the universals that keep life and hope continuing. In the Fun room pictures of eating, dancing and music are hung high. "High spirits” literally "raise the roof.”

Transition from one theme to another is effected by a variety of means. Love and Marriage flow directly to the Birth circle. The Death theme is like an isthmus, with family life as one continent, individual fate as the other. Floorto-ceiling murals serve simultaneously as anchors and points of departure.

The scale shift from small-to-large, large-to-small, is a breathing rhythm— the systols and diastole of the organism—keeps interest pulsing. There are "core” pictures which set up a magnetic field; prime example being the central family pivot around which so many sub-themes rotate. To keep interest from bogging down in a long development of a theme, surprise or shock is needed ; for example, the radiation pattern photographed in a Cloud Chamber gives an ominous polarity to a section of photographs on household chores.

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition of photographs meant to be seen in relation to each other begets new meaning to a thoughtful visitor. When 500 pictures interact in significant layouts, the subjective range of their implications become enormous for any one individual. He will be awed, embarrassed, exhilarated, according to age, sex and background. Our blind spots and sensitivities being semantically what they are, to every thinking onlooker these cross-connected ways of life will mean vastly different things. Consequently when we think of the implications aroused in a thousand different minds the subjective range of the implications becomes literally astronomical. In comprehending the show the individual himself is also enlarged, for these photographs are not photographs only—they are also phantom images of our co-citizens ; this woman into whose photographic eyes I now look is perhaps today weeding her family rice paddy, or boiling a fish in coconut milk. Can you look at the polygamous family group and imagine the different norms that make them live happily in their society which is so unlike—yet like—our own? Empathy with these hundreds of human beings truly expands our sense of values.

A PHOTOGRAPHIC GENRE

All this adds up to a genre which fuses science, photography, architecture, layout and writing into a compelling synthesis. Many photographers, blind to all but the single image, say, "Tes, but this isn’t photography it’s editing.” Many non-photographers say, "Maybe this isn’t Art, but it is wonderful.” And the latter may be closed to the truth. Photography however is the basic factor that ties all of these diverse elements together; without it the exact and poignant immediacy, the life blood of this show—this experience is unthinkable. No photograph in the show is an abstraction, as we usually think of that term; nevertheless the over-all flow is an abstract construction. At once realistic and abstract this show is representative of a genre that springs logically out of our own era. The medium is a generic communication form of Modern Art peculiar to our technological age, destined to be increasingly used.

COLLABORATION

Necessary to the success of Steichen’s epic coordination was the unselfish giving of self on the part of many people. The warmth and spontaneity of the texture of the show is a sign that the staff gave of themselves completely, and that many others in a thousand untold ways gave generously. Besides the assistants regularly mentioned there was Homer Page, who supervised print quality at Compo Photo Color; Kelly and Welcher, veteran display men, who produced the enlargements ; Dorothea Lange was instrumental in gathering the work of the West Coast photographers and adding her spark in New 'ïbrk; Kathleen Haven, Joan Miller, and many others, as secretaries, who kept track of pictures and precious negatives ; to say nothing of the Museum of Modern Art and its staff and trustees. It’s a show for millions by a few.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MEDIUM AND THE SHOW

This photographic panorama of people releases unsuspected springs of power. As we, of the live audience, gaze into the eyes of people living mere air hours distant we feel a strange immediacy. And this immediacy, when coupled with the ancient wisdom of the texts evokes a sense of vast collective life extending both backward and forward into time. Repeated visits increase this uncanny experience. At the installation of the children’s Ring Games, one pauses: "Now take hands and skip in a circle,” reverberates from one’s own childhood. Then, as one glances at a nearby picture of a tribal story teller in the middle of the squatting ring of hypnotized listeners, the similarity springs spontaneous mental pictures of early men and women circling in a harvest dance, or in the puberty rites welcoming young men and women into the tribal circle. One does not have to be an anthropologist to see atavisms. Beneath strange hats and coats, basic customs live long. Or as one stands before the Austrian family eating from the common pot, comes a flash-back recalling times when our forebears were hairier, and the cave smoke mingled with the steamy smells of venison stewing in its clay pot.

How few gestures of contemporary homo sapiens are "modern.” How infinitely small in remembered human time . . . are we . . . before towering Mt. Williamson, before the Cloud Chamber’s radiation zigzags. But being of this human wholeness, we have power to outlive loneliness, catastrophe, war, through the developing consciousness of the Family of Man. As we emerge from this show its hero stands revealed. It is the universal passion to live.