THE FAMILY OF MAN—YES! PROPAGANDA!

In 1955 Edward Steichen, a photographer and curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, launched his photographic essay, The Family of Man, accompanied by a book with the same title, iconic cover art by Leo Lionni. The introduction to the exhibit and its accompanying commentary were provided by Carl Sandburg, Steichen's brother-in-law. The exhibit in different versions toured around the world and the book has never been out of print.

I can't remember when I first saw the book, the most popular version of it being a soft cover edition, an early paperback book. I suppose it might have been in the early 60s because it accompanied me to medical school in 1967 and has been in our library ever since. When I think about all of my travels and the moves we have made in our lives, it is amazing to me that some of these early books have survived all the commotion. The exhibit appeared in the first few years after WWII and at the time was considered to be an ambitious attempt at American propaganda to link with the Marshall Plan reconstruction of societies in Europe. In our present contentious times it seems a minor criticism to have directed at the incredible attempt to celebrate human activities and the life cycle. As time passed, there were more criticisms of the exhibit for slighting marginalized populations and indigenous cultures. The exhibit culled from some 10,000 photographic negatives the 500-plus photographs finally included. So, the exhibit was the result of an extensive effort to represent as many different populations as possible, with an eye to the beauty of the photographs themselves. As I think about how the original exhibit was viewed differently in different eras, it seems to me the critiques tell us more about the times in which they were made than the actual exhibit. If one were truly sensitive to our times in this aspect then we might suggest that the exhibit be called “The Family of Humankind” the reference to “man” now clouds feminist perspectives on culture. I do think there is value in preserving Steichen's effort as it was originally constructed, if only as a bookmark to the inclusiveness and goodwill of those times just after a world war that witnessed the suffering and losses of many millions of people. There is also value in looking at the exhibit through the lenses of our own times now. The exhibit can be a teaching for us in how to see and think about one another, even though we all differ in so many respects. The teaching would include attention to our diverse populations as well as our universal heritage as human beings. I don't believe the intention of the exhibit was to covertly or overtly manipulate viewers into what they should think.

All of the photographs were black and white and as I page through them now I am reminded of why the book appealed to me in the first instance. Steichen, himself, considered the exhibit to be the culmination of the work of a lifetime in photography. Each of the photographs communicates a different level of intimacy that only photography can capture in the faces, gestures, and interactions of the subjects. If one can separate the “common” from the “special” among us, then the exhibit weighed heavily on subjects whose names were probably not known at the time they were photographed in unposed situations and interactions. There are the few celebrities among them; the photos of J. Robert Oppenheimer teaching a class, Toscanini, and Judge Learned Hand leaning over a legal text. But for the most part all the subjects are human beings captured in the courses of their rich lives. The photos were grouped to correspond to the cycle of life from birth to death. No one seems to have noticed the photographer with camera held to the eye. All are engaged and grounded.

Much attention was given to the actual details of the installation as it was constructed. Some of the photos were mural sized, some closer to postcard size. Some were mounted close to the floor, others mounted on the ceiling. The viewer was invited to stand up close for some and far back for others as a way of seeing the world of human activity in its panoramic dimensions. I had only the book as a reference and so it was not possible for me to experience the grand scope of the actual exhibit, but the book has served me well. Over time, as I have read magazines and newspapers, I have clipped photos from those sources and in retirement began a pasting project on poster board, making collages of the images in a mostly random fashion. Now, as I look back on some of them, I see that the seed for this project was planted many years ago with The Family of Man. There are an infinite number of images that one could gather from the billions of people now wandering the face of the earth. Each of us could be a study subject for such an exhibit.

When we look at the photos in the book, we are looking at ourselves in a mirror as well as others in very different settings. We are struck by the commonality of the human experience, no matter where on earth people wander. When I think about how different this type of exhibit might be today, I have only to look at my own collection of photos to see people in refugee camps, families at borders of countries attempting to cross into a new life, and children in detention who have been stripped from their immigrant parents. I see children still starving, women giving birth in difficult circumstances, patients in hospice care with devoted companions. I also see images of distant nebulae in galaxies never before imagined, creatures from the depths of the ocean never before captured. There are dictators and Nobel Prize winners, geniuses of technology, and images of poets who have died. Some of the photos are posed but most are moments of time in which a person is caught off guard, moments of self-absorption, confrontation, or meditation. There is no limit to how we can experience and process life that unfolds for us.

When I think about the initial criticisms of the exhibit and the implications that this exhibit was an America trying to propagate some specific doctrine in order to sway opinion, I pull back. If it was, indeed, propaganda, then it was an effort to show how much all of us share even at the end of a devastating war that engulfed millions of people and caused immeasurable suffering. One of the more controversial images was of the atomic bomb mushroom cloud from one of the test sites on Enewetak Atoll. It was a reminder of how possible it was to bring further destruction to the earth and its inhabitants. It was sober propaganda to draw all of us to the reality of what powerful forces man had created. For me, living now in a decidedly permeated nuclear age, I see the black and white photographs of human beings living their lives in stark relief against the potential destruction of those human lives and contamination of the earth for millennia. To what better uses could The Family of Man propaganda be directed? In the grand scheme of the life cycle all of us share, how do all the superficial differences and partisan battles add up in significance? It seems to me that we need books and exhibits like these to remind us of the joys and sorrows in our lives and how we can comfort one another despite our cultural and ethnic differences. Should we not devote more to the welfare of our neighbors, be they around the corner from us or across trackless oceans? Should we not show compassion that is essentially the message embedded in the black and white photographs so tenderly recorded and displayed and published? Can one look at any one of the photographs and not see compassion behind its selection? Even the Civil War soldier lying dead in the trench with a gun across his body must elicit in us compassion for him and for the loved ones never to hold him again or perhaps to even honor him in death by being able to bury him instead of knowing that he was interred in an unmarked grave with other fallen soldiers from both sides of the conflict. And the faces of distressed women with children captured by Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn worrying in the poverty of the moment and looking into the unknown future. These, too, with the beggars and grief stricken, the jubilant grandmothers, the storytellers and the students—all draw from us the compassion we have for them and the compassion we hope for ourselves. This, then, is useful propaganda even today and perhaps especially today when compassion is now considered a “radical” response to all that seems to have gone wrong with the body politic and our common relationships.

The Family of Man would propagandize the message of love and compassion for the plight of all of us in our profoundly rich and perilous lives. It would remind us how fragile life can be, yet how resilient we are in the face of all its exigencies and vicissitudes, its diseases and destructions. And death. Yes, the propaganda message of joy and sorrow is accompanied by the reality of death. In this, then, life and its various parts and experiences is brought back to us in a way that allows for common cause on a tilting planet that succors us with the tender loving care only mystery knows. Are we able to return the tender care to one another as well as the earth, our home?

I invite you to explore more deeply The Family of Man in all its dimensions. Let this idea of common family life touch you as it has me. May it spread as only good propaganda can.