The Family of Man
A 1955 exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art presenting 503 photographs from 68 countries as evidence of shared human experience.
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In depth
Curated by Edward Steichen, it toured for eight years and was seen by around nine million people, making it the most widely viewed photographic exhibition ever mounted. Its universalist thesis was influentially attacked by Roland Barthes, who argued that presenting birth, work and death as timeless obscured the political conditions that shape them.
Examples in practice
The exhibition's arrangement grouped pictures by theme rather than by country, explicitly to suggest a common humanity.