The Family of Man
Citation
Steichen, Edward, ed. The Family of Man. Prologue by Carl Sandburg. Introduction by Edward Steichen. New York: Maco Magazine Corporation for the Museum of Modern Art, 1955. 192 pp. (Paperback). A deluxe edition was co-published by Simon and Schuster (226 pp., boxed), including a portfolio of installation photographs by Ezra Stoller with photographic footnotes by Wayne Miller. Book layout by Leo Lionni; printed by R.R. Donnelley and Sons.
Relevance
The canonical primary source for the exhibition. Contains Sandburg’s prologue (distributed in full to visitors at MoMA as a leaflet and reprinted in both catalog editions), Steichen’s introduction written specifically for the book, and the quotations from world literature that were used as wall captions. The book reproduces virtually all 503 photographs in the exhibition. Any claim about the exhibition’s sequencing, captions, or thematic flow must be traceable to this source (or to Rudolph’s installation records).
Key excerpts / pages
- Carl Sandburg’s prologue, concluding sentence (quoted in the MoMA press release, June 21, 1955): “A camera testament, a drama of the grand canyon of humanity, an epic woven of fun, mystery and holiness — here is the Family of Man.”
- Steichen’s introduction (quoted in the MoMA press release): “The exhibition, now permanently presented on the pages of this book, demonstrates that the art of photography is a dynamic process of giving form to ideas and of explaining man to man. It was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life — as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.”
- Page numbers for individual plates and for Sandburg’s prologue text within the catalog are not yet verified here — the full interior is access-restricted on the Internet Archive scans we inspected (
https://archive.org/details/familyofman00stei,https://archive.org/details/familyofmangreat00stei). Exact pagination is therefore a known gap and should be confirmed against a physical copy or an unrestricted scan before it is cited in this repository.
Notes
- The catalog does not present a numbered table of thematic sections in the way a modern exhibition monograph might; it flows thematically as a photo-essay. Scholarly reconstructions (Sandeen 1995) and institutional summaries disagree on how many discrete “themes” or “sections” this flow should be parsed into — see
research/sections.mdfor the 32-vs-37 discrepancy. - Two printings: the $1 paperback (Maco / MoMA) and the $10 deluxe (Simon and Schuster / Maco / MoMA). Both reprint the prologue in full.
- The deluxe edition contains installation photographs by Ezra Stoller that are a primary source for the physical arrangement of Paul Rudolph’s design.
- Perspective: curatorial / institutional. Steichen’s introduction is a self-presentation of the exhibition’s thematic argument; Barthes 1957 and Sandeen 1995 offer the critical counter-readings.