11 Re-exhibiting The Family of Man
Luxembourg 2013
As a travelling exhibition in the 1950s and 1960s, The Family of Man, in line with the vision of its creator Edward Steichen, transcended national, cultural and political barriers, based on the confidence in the communicative powers of photography as a universal language. The exhibition was adapted to changing contexts and concepts over time; the last complete set of the travelling version arrived in Luxembourg at the end of its European tour in 1964, after a first presentation had been declined by the Luxembourg authorities in the 1950s. As a final step of the exhibition’s itinerancy, and upon Steichen’s request, The Family of Man was bequeathed to his native country in the hope of securing a permanent display for what he considered to be the most important work of his career, a work that epitomized his modernist and humanist ideas about what photography should be and what it could achieve in a global context.
This chapter will reflect from an institutional point of view on The Family of Man and its re-exhibition as a form of curatorial practice, and within the context of a history of exhibition design. This text will thus look at the process of reinstalling The Family of Man as a permanent collection at Clervaux Castle, Luxembourg; and it will examine the continuing connection between visitors’ reactions today and the ideas expressed in the opening address for the exhibition’s showing in Frankfurt by Max Horkheimer. To close, I will refer to Barthes’s notes on photography for some reflections on the identificational strategies and processes at work when we look at photographs, especially those of The Family of Man.
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The Family of Man came to Luxembourg as an exhibition and made its way through the years to become a heritage collection. It was exhibited at various stages and with various backdrops throughout the Grand Duchy: from an initial presentation at the former State Museum (today the Musée National d’Histoire et d’Art (MNHA), the National Museum of History and Art), it travelled the country and was displayed in its entirety or in part on several occasions before being incorporated into the archives of the incipient Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg’s national institute for audiovisual arts, in 1989. With its institutionalization, the transformation process from exhibition to archive collection and from temporary show to permanent display of a heritage began. The original photographic panels were reassembled and underwent photographic restoration, and the exhibition went on permanent display in 1994 at Clervaux Castle (a twelfth-century building largely reconstructed after World War II) in the north of Luxembourg.1 The collection prints and the exhibition rooms then underwent further restoration almost two decades later and the exhibition was re-presented in a revised installation in 2013. This second renovation and restoration project addressed issues of long-term conservation and creating a suitable environment for the collection on the level of contemporary museology, including the institutional approach to heritage as well as creating new ways of access for different publics. I will concentrate on this second reinstallation of the collection under the auspices of the CNA, and on the considerations that guided the curatorial decisions.2
Both the 1994 and 2013 presentations were governed by the concept of a complete restitution of the collection in accordance with its original historical precepts. Also the decision was taken to exhibit the restored original prints and keep the historical traces they bear as part of the heritage instead of displaying reproductions.3 Fidelity to the narrative and the spatial presentation of the exhibition themes was paramount. The frame for the spatial reinstallation was set by the ‘installation instructions’ compiled by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), which accompanied every travelling version of the show to ensure the homogeneity of the presentations and the compliance with the overall ideas and design by Steichen. Further sources for studying the historical design concept included floor plans and black-and-white installation photographs of the MoMA presentation. In addition, photographs of The Family of Man at various exhibition venues also helped shape the ideas and concept for adapting the collection to its permanent galleries and guided its interpretation within the space design.
Taking into account the complex visual and spatial strategies employed by The Family of Man and their physical and psychological impact on the viewer, the adaptation to a permanent gallery was not only guided by matters of design and historical coherence, but also had to consider issues regarding the changing context and status of the exhibition over the years. The reinstallation of the collection and the redesign of the exhibition space in Clervaux were governed by a twofold set of questions of interpretation and conservation alike. The re-exhibiting of an exhibition decades after the original showing necessarily involves a reinterpretation determined by changing historical and cultural contexts. One of the challenges we faced was how to render this visible via the redesign of the exhibition. This effort involved revisiting not only the original montaged installation and layouts, but also the early evolution of the idea of the exhibition during the planning stage, the exhibition’s world tour, the political and ideological issues it raised and also the varied history of its reception. In addition, the photographs’ materiality had to be considered within an approach of preventive conservation from the perspective of a commitment to long-term presentation, which at some stages had an impact on the design of the collection’s reinstallation. All this is today part of the legacy of The Family of Man and forms a rich fabric of multiple and layered temporalities and histories.
The final exhibition model decided on at Clervaux translated on a surface level the exhibition’s narrative from the large square space that occupied the whole of MoMA’s second floor in 1955 to the rectangular exhibition galleries in the castle spread across two floors (see illustrations 39 and 7). From a display and overall scenography perspective, this interpretation involved altering The Family of Man’s original appearance and creating a new setting, in which the exhibition’s narrative could unfold in suitably contemporary ways without violating its historical intentions and imperatives. A clear imaginary line was drawn between historical fidelity to the original MoMA show and its narrative, when it came to following its chronological unfolding and presentation of its thematic chapters, and the contemporary spatial interpretation. This meant taking into account what makes it a piece of heritage today and, in doing so, insinuating into the reinstallation the shift from then to now, and from the travelling exhibition to a permanent presentation of a heritage collection as an object of study. This was done, for example, by disregarding certain facts that could not be confidently reconstituted, such as the exact original wall colour or lighting. Other elements, such as distances between photographs and spatial perspectives also had to be altered in order to accommodate the show in its new setting (see illustration 37). Although an integral and important part of the exhibition design and of the visitor experience at MoMA (not necessarily in the various international venues), the additional dramatic effect conveyed by the deployment of these scenographic elements went against the contemporary aspiration and concept of creating a present and ‘scientific’ distance within the reinstallation in order to reflect the amount of time separating it from the original. Presenting The Family of Man in a space in which care has been taken to employ a ‘neutral’ design language in keeping with contemporary museology and the conception of the ‘white cube’ helps to anchor the reconceptualization of the collection into an object of study within the scenography. The creation of distance in the exhibition design inserts a break and generates an opportunity for a contemporary interpretation for the visitor: the distance from the original allows for a critical analysis of the exhibition’s visual strategies and the deconstruction of their emotional impact. As a side note, the issue of lighting also takes into account conservational observations and norms regarding the exhibition of historical photographs, which call for a maximum light intensity of 50 lux on the picture surface. With regard to other aspects of the installation, today’s exhibition design retains the form and function of the original display without replicating the original materials and feel, as seen for instance in the adaptation of the lovers and birth sections at the beginning of the reinstallation: at MoMA, the visitor entering the exhibition was faced with a simultaneous spectacle of pictures of lovers displayed on a transparent background that allowed a view through to later rooms, revealing how the narrative would develop and a preview of the core theme of the family pictures. From the lovers’ theme the visitor was carried on to the pictures of birth, mounted on a white transparent curtain forming a half-circle, with the sense of the circle reinforced by a focused ceiling light, the two together creating a separate space and atmosphere for these photographs. For the theme’s transposition to Clervaux, the architecture of the castle prevented an opening of the perspectives behind the lovers’ theme; a straightforwardly chronological approach was therefore adopted. The curtain of the birth theme has been replaced with a metal grid, retaining something of the original form (the half circle) and function (transparency), without recreating the medical atmosphere of the original presentation.4 Also the lighting was adapted here to the ‘neutrality’ of the general presentation without singular treatment for specific pictures or themes (a decision also guided by conservation precepts) (see illustrations 40, 41).
39 (facing page) Installation of The Family of Man at Clervaux Castle (2013). Themes: 1. Prologue: Creation of universe – Creation of man, 2. Lovers, 3. Childbirth, 4. Mothers and children, 5. Children playing, 6. Fathers and sons, 7. Disturbed children, 8. Agriculture, 9. Labour, 10. ‘Family of man’ central theme pictures, 11. Household and office work, 12. Eating, 13. Folk-singing, 14. Drinking, playing, 15. Dancing, 16. Music, 17. Ring-around-the-rosy-stand, 18. Learning, thinking and teaching, 19. Human relations, 20. Death, 21. Grief, pity, 22. Dreamers, 23. Loneliness, 24. Religion, 25. Hard times and famine, 26. Man’s inhumanity to man, 27. Rebels, 28. Youth, 29. Justice, 30. Public debate, 31. Faces of war, 32. Dead soldier, 33. H-bomb explosion, 34. United Nations, 35. Children.
40 The Family of Man at the Museum of Modern Art, New York City.
41 The Family of Man installation at Clervaux Castle. Theme ‘Lovers, childbirth, mothers and children’.
Another example of deviating design and consequent different exhibition experience that reflect the shift in time from 1955 to 2013 can be seen in the presentation of the H-bomb picture. The MoMA visitor, wandering through the second part of the exhibition and its increasingly dramatic tone, arrives at the culminating point in a darkened room in front of the back-lit colour transparency of an H-bomb explosion, filling the entire room and reminding the visitor of the imminent concerns and threats of the time, before discovering the closing pictures of the UN Assembly and children. In accordance with the general approach of dedramatizing the exhibition through the abstraction of additional scenographic effects, the H-bomb picture is displayed in Clervaux on the background of a white wall, without a compulsory stop in the flow of the visit, something that would not have been possible architecturally at Clervaux (see illustration 43).5 Following the scheme of the exhibition’s travelling versions, the original black-and-white print of the photograph has also been retained. The decision about its position within the 2013 presentation takes account of its original 1955 location at MoMA, but also of the quite different dialogues of the picture with its surrounding photographs during the travelling exhibitions. A more direct and open dialogue has thus been constructed between the bomb and its neighbouring pictures, especially the photograph of the United Nations Assembly: the two now face each other, a difference in the display that hints at a shift in interpretation as dependent on changing historical contexts. The distance in time from the nuclear threat during the Cold War and thus from the direct connection between the exhibition and the visitor’s present frame of reference is followed today by a shift in the public reception of this theme not anymore as nucleus of the exhibition itself, but rather as an abstract and symbolic danger.
The presentation of the collection in Clervaux on the one hand involves a double conception of the exhibition as a historical artefact and an object of study, while on the other hand it functions as a prolongation of The Family of Man’s world tour. In ‘Remembering Exhibitions’ Reesa Greenberg refers to the reassembling and re-presenting of past exhibitions as replica: ‘In most replica exhibitions,’ she writes, ‘there is some deviation from the original, and the art is often supplemented by archival documentation ranging from exhibition photographs to documents relating to the show’s reception. Usually, these exhibitions are large-scale homage or anniversary exhibitions, designed to isolate an important moment in art history, to promote research, and to underscore the singularity of a given exhibition.’6 This description concurs with the threefold intention of the reinstallation at Clervaux: rendering the experience of the exhibition to make it as close as possible to the original for a contemporary audience; encouraging reflection on a special moment in the history of exhibition design and photography; and in addition, promoting the conservation of an international but also national photographic heritage. The prolongation of the exhibition’s history as a travelling show in Clervaux avoids the obtrusive inclusion of interpretative texts or other media within the exhibition space itself, what Reesa Greenberg refers to as ‘archival documentation’. It was deemed important to ensure for the viewer at Clervaux as far as possible an ‘unmediated’ access to the exhibition free from other sources and interpretations, to approximate the original impact of Steichen’s photoessay even if the contemporary design of the space brings (and is intended to bring) its influence to bear on the viewer’s experience. This practice carries, of course, the risk of objectifying and museifying the exhibition by removing its historical contexts, suggesting for it an aesthetic autonomy and asserting new elements of ‘truth’. This is a difficulty built into our approach to the heritage that is intentioned to be balanced with a new mediation concept. As observed in a study of visitor reactions and experiences during the exhibition’s installation at Clervaux Castle during the 1994–2010 period, visitors reacted mostly emotionally to The Family of Man, in a way that was disengaged from the exhibition’s historical origins. By being disconnected from part of its history, the exhibition’s humanist statement was simultaneously rendered more powerful and timeless, but also naïve. The display of the collection without interpretative media in the exhibition rooms favoured a more immutable aesthetic statement, suppressing the distance in time from the original. Conceptualizing the exhibition as a re-exhibition opens up the possibility of considering it as a form of expression and as a medium in itself, ‘rather than a seemingly neutral, nodal medium for presenting individual art works’.7
To facilitate and ensure the awareness of the historical layers in the 2013 presentation, ‘archival documentation’ was incorporated into the redesign of the exhibition in different forms, separate from the original narrative and as unobtrusively as possible. An application for a mini iPad has been designed to accompany visitors on their journey through Steichen’s narrative, unfolding a parallel path of access, understanding and interpretation. The mediation approach trusts the visitors’ ability to create sense out of what they see and concentrates on what they may not deduce. Besides a basic historical and interpretative line, the application gives access for example to information on the exhibition’s history and circulation, restoration insights and interviews, building the context for a new historical narrative: it maps the evolution and status shift from exhibition to heritage collection, and it contextualizes Steichen’s voice as a curator, creating various paths of access and enabling different forms of engagement – emotional, historical, critical. The integration of installation photographs of various venues where The Family of Man was shown illustrates the shifts in time and space and acquaints the viewer with the comings and goings between past and present to the ‘benefit of an actualised interpretation of the past through the present moment’.8 This documentation is extended with a museum library halfway through the exhibition, collecting primary and secondary documents, photographer’s monographs, critical and theoretical publications, as well as the books of other photographic projects inspired by The Family of Man.
This alternative access to the collection through historical contextualization forms an additional layer in the fabric of display at Clervaux. Within the emerging and widening interest in exhibitions as subjects of repetition and of study and as part of art history, the reinstallation of The Family of Man had to be placed into a historical and self-reflexive framework, reflecting on photography and history, the exhibition as a medium within its history and particular curatorial and archival practices.
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In the sequence of exhibitions starting in the 1920s that used modernist design ideas and spatial strategies and the photograph as a document and instrument for visual persuasion, The Family of Man occupies the end of an era marked by the belief in photography as a universal language and a ‘last gasp of humanity-as-family’.9 The centrality of vision in the Western epistemological paradigm, combined with architectural artifice in exhibition design, turns the viewer into an active agent in the production of meaning within a field of dynamic vision. In the post-war years, when photography was also developing as a means of communication in illustrated magazines, The Family of Man was seen as ‘the culmination of the principles of the exhibition based on expanded vision’,10 as theorized by Herbert Bayer, the Bauhaus designer who collaborated with Steichen at MoMA in the years just before The Family of Man; it ‘represented the end of the historical moment in which photography was key to visual paradigms and techniques’.11 This place in history may help explain the different critical approaches to the exhibition’s humanist claims lodged between antagonist scholarly currents.12
Although the universalist claims for the medium and language of photography have been widely criticized within academic literature since The Family of Man, and photography has been increasingly theorized within historically and culturally specific frameworks, the exhibition’s popular reception history is to the present day characterized by the embracing of the humanist message, along with the acceptance of photography as a collective tool of communication and its endorsement as a ‘natural’ language. For the general public, I would claim that the belief in photography’s indexical relation to reality contributes to the exhibition still being seen today within its initial frame of reference in terms of connecting people, and it positions photomontage as an effectual visual tool and psychological strategy. The Family of Man is a product of its time and for its time, but interestingly the recent reception of the exhibition seems to hint at some ‘universal’ aspect to the humanist ideas depicted by Steichen – at least at a comprehension of those values over time. The viewing experience of the exhibition remains for a large part of the public connected to an emotional journey, activating personal memories and associated feelings, and functions as a captivating narrative with some abstract points of connection to the world of today. By no means can the positive reception of the exhibit be equated with the ignorance of the discourse’s construction (formerly and today), but parallels can be drawn with film reception, where the momentary adherence for the time of the fiction to a story does not imply a belief in its factual reality. From today’s viewpoint on the reinstallation, this makes it all the more important to accurately contextualize the exhibition within its time and to discuss or render transparent its visual communicative strategies.
At this point, I would like to introduce Max Horkheimer into the argument and his notion of identification with regard to the exhibition in the context of his opening address for the Frankfurt stop of The Family of Man in 1958. The German version of the exhibition featured the subtitle ‘wir alle’ (‘all of us’), and so induced the idea of a communal representation and experience from the outset. The use of ‘us’ presupposed a communal entity and a shared feeling of belonging. In his opening talk, Horkheimer stressed the constructive effect of the show in a post-war world and the implication of the viewer in the process of constructing meaning: The Family of Man is more than the sum of its parts, the single photographs, made possible by a productive tension between the general idea or thought and the picture reality. According to Ariella Azoulay, this productive tension is made possible and emphasized by the juxtaposition of pictures without captions – Steichen’s much criticized practice of decontextualization – and opens up the possibilities for the production of meaning.13 The latter involves the imagination of the viewer, which in turn is activated via identification and empathy. For Horkheimer, the exhibition allows the viewer to experience identity within difference helped by the representation of the everyday and the experience of familiarity as an emotional connection with some depictions in spite of others. And it is precisely this emotional connection via identification that continues to involve viewers to the present day and that makes a difference to critical approaches to the exhibition based solely on the catalogue. In the catalogue, the visual argument is not experienced physically and psychologically in the same way. In my experience in welcoming researchers, critics and journalists, I have come across several individuals who, despite being critically well informed and educated about The Family of Man, visiting the exhibition experienced emotional involvement against their intellectual critical will. Love it or hate it, indifference is not an option.14
Approaching The Family of Man through the lens of identification makes the exhibition contingent and personal via the viewer’s appropriation. It opens up new possibilities of difference and for subjectifying the exhibition, its derived ideas and its reception rather than objectifying it as Steichen’s immutable statement.15 Through the viewer as an active element in the production of meaning, ‘the exhibition can be seen as constituting a frontier or space of encounter whose meaning was potentially remade by its viewers and receivers across the globe, who were by no means passive recipients of its stated aims but active agents in the ways they chose to apprehend and make use of it’.16 The production of meaning is thus understood as context-determined, shifting and personally negotiated. In this sense, a global detailed research of the exhibition’s reception history would make a valuable addition to the field of study.
Against this background, the studies by Margaret Olin of the photograph as a relational art may be invoked: ‘photography gains power as a relational art, its meaning determined not only by what it looks like but also by the relationship we are invited to have with it’.17 Photography facilitates relations, and as Olin puts it, ‘photography […] makes connections with people’.18 The visual and emotional connections seem more direct and obvious than the physical ones, when applied to The Family of Man as a museum object. Observing visitors in the museum’s galleries confirms that one of the exhibition’s achievements is the creation of dialogue – not only between pictures, but also between viewers. This is often accompanied by physical gestures that involve showing and touching – the exhibited photographs included. From the perspective of a conservator, this of course constitutes an act of transgression of the museological ‘rules of conduct’ with regard to works of art, placing the latter at risk of deterioration. From the perspective of a historian reflecting on The Family of Man, its identificatory strategies and patterns of spectator involvement, this act is a gift, testifying by its very nature to the performative and relational aspects of the exhibition and to its haptic qualities. Returning briefly to the curatorial decisions within the context of the reinstallation, it must be noted that a conscious curatorial choice was made not to add a physical barrier between artwork and viewer as a measure of protection, in order to allow the relational and communicative strategies of the exhibition to unfold as originally intended. The gesture of touch within the context of the exhibition today furthermore suggests that the material status of photography as an artwork (at least concerning the unframed works of the exhibited heritage) and as a historical trace is still being contested by the wider public – and this because of its potential of mechanical reproduction.
To conclude the reflections on identification as a possibility of approaching the viewing of the exhibit, I will call upon Roland Barthes. But rather than discuss his most cited review of the exhibition in his article ‘The Great Family of Man’, I will focus on one of his later texts, Camera Lucida, and endeavour to relate his theorization of his personal approach to photography to Horkheimer’s notion of identification as applied to The Family of Man. In Camera Lucida, Barthes approaches photography from a subjective point of view, using the observation of his personal reactions to a photograph as a starting point. On the basis of an indexical understanding of photography’s relation to reality and over the course of his analysis, he identifies the studium as related to a culture, a referent to a kind of knowledge, through which emotion passes and is mediated. Here we can already observe that the decontextualized photographs of The Family of Man sometimes oppose this kind of analysis or cultural reference beyond a certain point, because of the absence of captions (and this factual reference is what today’s typical museumgoers miss). The punctum, in Barthes’s essay, is what permits a personal relation to what is represented; this is what allows a relational and emotional transfer between photograph and viewer. Something personal is activated and added to the photograph in the process through an element that ‘touches’ the viewer. The punctum converts the connection to the picture to a personal and subjective involvement and allows the photograph to always be actualized anew through the activation of personal memories and emotions. Time is condensed and fictionalized within this connection and the comings and goings between the represented reality and the viewer’s present. So can we claim the punctum to be just another facet of the process of identification? Photography and the belief in its indexicality facilitate identification, but the latter is (in The Family of Man) not necessarily based on the representation’s supposed congruence with reality or the identification of a particular scene, but rather on its recognizable effects of familiarity. In this sense, the photographs of the exhibition exert an effect – tied to the punctum – and, in the words of Olin, ‘act rather than represent’.19 Olin goes on to say, ‘a reading of Camera Lucida suggests that the most significant indexical power of the photograph may consequently lie not in the relation between the photograph and its subject but in the relation between the photograph and its beholder, or user, in what I would like to call a “performative index” or an “index of identification”’.20 This interpretation of Barthes’s analysis may be seen as an attempt to reconcile him with The Family of Man, not as a statement understood through history, but via the actualization of its photographs within the realm of subjectivity. Here, The Family of Man is not understood solely as the constructed whole and its emanating, overarching idea as a myth of humanity’s essence, but the analysis goes back to the constitutive parts, permitting a dialogue, subjective and shifting, within various frames contingent upon time and space.
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The Family of Man is a piece of heritage and a phenomenon which has kept some of its mystery over time. By outlining the considerations that guided the contemporary curatorial practice of the re-exhibition and by placing the viewer’s approach to the collection within the interpretative context of access via identification, I am not arguing against a historical understanding of the exhibition. On the contrary, all the formulated critiques on and approaches to The Family of Man over time and the problematization of its strategies of representation are all ‘true’, precious and necessary steps within the historical understanding of the exhibition and its shifting frames of reference. Exploring the issue of identification with regard to the exhibit allows insights to be gained and possibly explains some of the power and appeal the exhibition still holds for visitors today, via an actualization of its narrative through the activation of a personal connection. This contribution intends to pave the way for questions and to encourage discussions and this volume will hopefully lead to a proliferation of approaches within research, by advocating not just one interpretative approach for or against Steichen’s legacy, but rather allowing it to fluctuate with and over time. Today, the exhibition is seen as a piece of heritage and an archive undergoing gradual change; it is always fragmentary, as is memory. The contemporary museological approach to the object of study is thus defined by these multiple directions and attitudes within research, which is seen as an ongoing process and dialogue with its object in different and evolving contexts. Finally, besides generating the phenomenon of uniting and connecting so many people worldwide to the photographic representation of humanity as a concept, the real ingenuity of Steichen and his collaborators possibly lies in their ability to keep the discussions going after all this time.
Notes
1 During his last visit to the Grand Duchy in 1966, Edward Steichen seems to have expressed the wish to see The Family of Man permanently displayed at Clervaux Castle. A first showing in 1975 presented about 200 prints of the original exhibition without considering Steichen’s design, before being rediscovered and restored by the CNA at the beginning of the 1990s.
2 The restoration and conservation processes were documented over time. For an overview of the first restoration campaign in the 1990s, see Jean Back and Gabriel Bauret (eds), The Family of Man: Témoignages et Documents (Luxembourg: Art Events, CNA and Ministère des Affaires Culturelles, 1994); the second restoration campaign preceding the reinstallation in 2013 is documented in a film entitled The Family of Man & The Bitter Years: A Heritage Restoration Project (CNA, 2013), included in the publication Steichen’s Castle and Tower: The Family of Man/Clervaux – The Bitter Years/Dudelange (Dudelange: CNA, 2013).
3 At this point it should be mentioned that the contextual preservation and conservation as heritage at Clervaux stand in contrast to what Steichen initially intended. His concept was bound to the medium of photography, and its ability of mechanical reproduction, but not to the materiality or the authenticity of the original as conceived by the art market or the museum. This can be seen for example in the material decisions he made to produce and reproduce several exhibition sets for widespread circulation and communication – not for the preservation of a permanent heritage. Over time, the collection’s changing status also drew attention to the material production as part of the documentation of the heritage, its processes of creation and finally its circulation, which left a lasting impact on the object.
4 From the designer’s point of view the range of materials used was reduced. Only a few are employed throughout the exhibition design and these had to conform to the conservation needs of the photographs. (So, for example, materials that easily accumulate dust particles, or plain wood that releases acid over time were avoided.)
5 In accordance with the historical approach to the exhibition and its (re)installation, access is given to the original picture of the bomb as displayed at MoMA in the iPad application and in the presentation of a three-dimensional reconstitution of the New York showing of the exhibition at the museum library.
6 Reesa Greenberg, ‘Remembering Exhibitions: From Point to Line to Web’ (Tate Papers, Autumn 2009), 3, http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/12 (accessed 25 April 2016).
7 Greenberg, ‘Remembering Exhibitions’, 3.
8 Elitza Dulguerova, ‘L’expérience et son double: notes sur la reconstruction d’expositions et la photographie’, Intermédialités: histoire et théorie des arts, des lettres et des techniques [Intermediality: History and Theory of the Arts, Literature and Technologies] 15 (2010), http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/044674ar (accessed 30 March 2016): 59.
9 Tirdad Zolghadr, introduction in Thomas Keenan and Tirdad Zolghadr (eds), The Human Snapshot (Feldmeilen, New York and Berlin: LUMA, Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and Sternberg Press, 2003), 16.
10 Jorge Ribalta, Public Photographic Spaces: Exhibitions of Propaganda, from Pressa to The Family of Man, 1928–1955 (Barcelona: MACBA, 2008), 24.
11 Ibid., 26.
12 See Winfried Fluck’s contribution to this volume which resituates the exhibition within this intellectual debate.
13 Ariella Azoulay, ‘The Family of Man: A Visual Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, in Thomas Keenan and Tirdad Zolghadr (eds), The Human Snapshot (Feldmeilen, New York and Berlin: LUMA, Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College and Sternberg Press, 2003), 19–49.
14 For further readings and interpretation of the exhibition as connected to the active process of identification, see Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World: Photography and its Nation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), and Fred Turner’s article ‘The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America’, Public Culture 24, no. 1 (2012): 55–84.
15 See also the theorization of the space between picture and image by Winfried Fluck in this volume.
16 Tamar Garb, ‘Rethinking Sekula from the Global South: Humanist Photography Revisited’, Grey Room 55 (Spring 2014): 41.
17 Margaret Olin, Touching Photographs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 3.
18 Ibid., ix.
19 Ibid., 17.
20 Ibid., 69.