ABSTRACT
The Family of Man is, by a very long measure, the most widely seen exhibition in the history of photography. The book of the exhibition is also the most commercially successful photobook of all time. The popular response to The Family of Man indicates that the exhibition did cultural work that people found relevant on an unprecedented scale in the post-war world: it also suggests a near universal acceptance of the show’s particular articulation of humanism and a confirmation of its faith in photography as a medium uniquely able to communicate across cultures and time. Wolfgang Koeppen, one of the foremost German novelists of the post-war era, offers an enthusiastic, impressionistic rather than philosophical response to The Family of Man in a review of the exhibition for the Suddeutsche Zeitung, a Munich newspaper. Koeppen is best known for his mid-century novels exploring with an unflinching gaze the recent past and present realities of post-1945 Germany.
