The book is the catalog of one of the most important exhibitions in the history of photography. In 1955 Edward Steichen, then director of MoMA’s photography department in New York, gathered 503 photos by 273 photographers from 68 countries and created a monument to humanist photography.
The idea was, through images, to show that beyond the very different cultural appearances… we are all the same: humanity as one big family. Themes such as work, education, leisure, love and the stages of life are presented in photos in the journalistic or documentary genre. Instead of an academic curatorial text, the walls and panels displayed brief quotes from literature and philosophy amidst the images.
Steichen issued press releases inviting “any camera owner” to send in photographs. He was famous for claiming that even rudimentary contact prints were acceptable, as long as they captured the “gamut of life”. Something also came from the archives of magazines that had been publishing photo essays in the style that interested Steichen since the 1930s. Of course, a good number of photography bigwigs were also present, among them:
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Dorothea Lange
Ansel Adams
Robert Capa
Robert Doisneau
Bill Brandt
August Sander
Margaret Bourke-White
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Garry Winogrand
Eugene Smith
The exhibition toured the world and was seen by millions of people. The book is very easy to find as it has been reissued in various formats. It’s a must-have for any photography library. Below are a few pages to show the mood of the book.
