Documentation

The conference wants to reassess and discuss the exhibition’s appeal and message, launched against the backdrop of Cold War threat of atomic annihilation. It also wants to indicate new ways in which the exhibition, as an artistic response to a historical moment of crisis, can remain relevant in the context of 21st century challenges. Download the programme of the conference. The book entitled "The Family of Man Revisited: Photography in a Global Age" with the contributio...

videos photos programme

Book in English.
With contributions by Winfried Fluck, Ulrike Gehring, Gerd Hurm, Martin Jay, Miles Orvell, Anke Reitz, Eric Sandeen, Kerstin Schmidt, Werner Sollors and Shamoon Zamir. The Family of Man is the most widely seen exhibition in the history of photography. The book of the exhibition, still in print, is also the most commercially successful photobook ever published. First shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, the exhibition t...

Shelley Rice's lecture will describe the many facets of Edward Steichen – artist, commercial photographer, modern art impresario, curator, animator etc. – in order to place him (and them) within the context of early 20th century New York. The rise of mass media, the expansion of modern art practices and institutional infrastructures, the globalization of capitalism and visual culture: Steichen embraced all of these transformative social changes, and insisted on contributing to...

Biography in german.  The fascinating life and world-famous work of Edward Steichen, an American photographer of Luxembourg origin and a multi-talented artist, is at the center of this monography, which is conceived at the same time as a reinterpretation of the history of modern art. On the basis of new research, Gerd Hurm explains why, in works on 20th century art, Edward Steichen, his artistic projects and his commitment to pacifism, human right...

A talk with Sarah Meister (Photography Curator, MoMA) about Dorothea Lange and her work: Lange once remarked: "All photographs - not only those that are so-called 'documentary' - can be fortified by words," a statement through which we can investigate her lifelong commitment to image making. This talk will consider the ways in which Lange's most iconic photograph, commonly known as 'Migrant Mother', has been fortified - and undermined - by words.  ...