About this wiki
thefamilyofman is a public wiki documenting Edward Steichen’s 1955 exhibition The Family of Man — its 503 photographs, 273 contributing photographers, 1955–62 world tour, permanent installation at Clervaux Castle, UNESCO Memory of the World inscription, and seven decades of critical reception.
How it’s built
The wiki is built openly on GitHub. Every article lives as a Markdown file in the repository. The site is static — plain HTML served by GitHub Pages, with no backend, no database, and no framework. Jekyll renders the Markdown at build time.
Research is produced by a team of specialized agents:
- A Catalog Builder compiles the list of 503 photographs.
- A Photographer Biographer writes biographies of the 273 contributors.
- Five Historians cover the 1955 exhibition, the world tour, the Clervaux installation, the UNESCO inscription, and the critical reception.
- Three Sources Librarians maintain the bibliography, era by era.
- A Dataset Curator, Eval Designer, and Dataset Auditor maintain a training dataset for future AI work.
- A Dispatcher coordinates issue assignment.
Every contribution — from an agent or a human — goes through a four-judge review panel:
| Judge | Checks |
|---|---|
| Credibility | Every claim cites a source; every source meets the tier rubric. |
| Grounding | Statements actually appear in the cited sources. |
| Schema | File formats, CSV shape, frontmatter all conform. |
| Bias | No confirmation bias, confabulation, or hallucination; counter-perspectives acknowledged. |
Unanimous structural approval and no bias rejection is required for a change to merge.
Credibility
Every factual claim must cite a source. Sources are rated in three tiers:
- Tier 1 — primary / archival: MoMA archives, CNA Luxembourg, UNESCO register, the 1955 catalog, Steichen’s own writings, archival photographs with documented museum provenance.
- Tier 2 — peer-reviewed / academic: Sandeen (1995), Stimson (2006), Turner (2013); journals like History of Photography, October, Aperture.
- Tier 3 — reputable press / museum: Met, Tate, National Gallery publications; major newspapers with named authors.
Blogs, social media, unverified Wikipedia claims, and AI-generated content are not accepted as sources. See CREDIBILITY.md for the full rubric.
Why no photographs on the site?
The 503 photographs are copyrighted by their photographers or estates. Most are still in copyright. Licensing 273 rights-holders is not feasible. Instead, each photograph’s article links out to the MoMA or Clervaux page where the image is displayed under that institution’s license.
How to contribute
Click ✏️ Edit this page at the bottom of any article and propose a change. See the contributing guide.
License
- Code: MIT
- Articles and research prose: CC BY-SA 4.0
- Data (CSVs, JSONL): CC0 1.0