In this post, I am going to talk about an image from The Family of Man. This exhibition was; 'to showcase the beautiful universality of human experience. Its mastermind, Edward Steichen, honed two million pictures down to 503, capturing everyday life in 69 countries. It started out at MoMA in 1955 then toured the world, being seen by nine million people.' (“The Family of Man: Photography That United the Planet – in Pictures”:2015) The image below shows an empty forest with a naked child (a girl) in the foreground. The light plays in the background on the higher ground in the top third of this image, the middle third is undulating dark ground covered in forest leaves and in the last third in the foreground, the naked child lies slightly off-centre. The immediate question is; Is the child dead or alive? Barbara Bullock Wilson, the child in the image now states on her site, the questions that were asked of her family about the image of the child asleep or did something dreadful befall her? Does she belong where she is, did she come willingly, or was she brought to this place forcefully and then abandoned? Perhaps the figure is not a living thing at all, but rather a statue.
Barbara Bullock Wilson also states; - 'He [Wynn Bullock, her father] would invite them to look at the photograph again. "Be with the child, feel her presence, see the leaves adorning her hair. Put yourself in the forest, watch the light, sense the life." He would go on to say, "There may be a mystery here, but it isn't sinister. It's the mystery of difference and of oneness, of universal forces and relationships, of dimensions we can only begin to glimpse."' (Wilson Bullock B:2015)
The relationship in the image of the forest to the girl is interesting, her naked and innocent body lies exposed to the elements and the forest has created a soft bed for her to lie on, the forest around could be seen as protective and warm. It also represents the idea of life and creating life as the forest holds so many eco-systems and child perhaps grows like the trees. The light falls on the white skin standing out from the dark of the forest and this white against the dark heightens the innocence of the child against perhaps darker forces of nature. This image has many readings and that is the success of this image
Looking wider at where this shot was shown in the exhibition of the Family of Man the exhibition took place at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, from January 24 to May 8, 1955. The U.S. Information Agency popularized The Family of Man as an achievement of American culture by presenting ten different versions of the show in 91 cities in 38 countries between 1955 and 1962, The images came from Life magazine and also Vogue or Ladies Home Journal. Photography agencies such as Magnum, Black Star, and Rapho Guillumette these images were then cut down to the final images and curated by Steichen and grouped in thematic sections that 'narrated a generalised story of human life' (“The Family of Man: Photography That United the Planet – in Pictures”:2015) The exhibition was criticised by Barthes as he felt there was no historical context and it was an essentialist depiction of birth and death. Miriam Webster Dictionary states; 'Essentialism is the practice of regarding something (such as a presumed human trait) as having innate existence or universal validity rather than as being a social, ideological, or intellectual construct' (Essentialism definition & meaning: 2024). It was also criticised by others as being liberalist, from a Western point of view, cultural colonialism, and silencing photographers and Steichen creating his own narrative. This was probably true and it certainly was Stecichen's vision of humanity and how it should be presented to the world. This is the interesting thing about curation when others place a narration on your images the story will change and it may not have been at all the vision of the original photographers and all the images were taken from their original context.
As time has passed critics have been more forgiving and saw the exhibition as historically important and representing views and ideas of the time from a Western perspective. What is interesting is how non-western photographers viewed the world and the study of the original images in the exhibition and how they are presented is still much debated today.
References
“The Family of Man: Photography That United the Planet – in Pictures.” The Guardian, 6 Nov. 2015, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/nov/06/the-family-of-man-photography-united-the-planet-edward-steichen. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.
Tīfentāle, Alise . “The Family of Man: The Photography Exhibition That Everybody Loves to Hate.” FK, July 2018, fkmagazine.lv/2018/07/02/the-family-of-man-the-photography-exhibition-that-everybody-loves-to-hate/. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.
Barbara Bullock Wilson (2015) “Wynn Bullock Photography - Child in Forest, 1951.” Www.wynnbullockphotography.com, 2024, www.wynnbullockphotography.com/highlights/palm-beach-2012/child-in-forest-text.html. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.
Essentialism definition & meaning (no date) Merriam-Webster. Available at: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/essentialism (Accessed: 04 February 2024).
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