ABSTRACT
The exhibition of 503 photographs from 68 countries, which, in the Federal Republic, can be seen only in Munich, selected from 10,000 images of masters and amateurs and compiled on behalf of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mankind, all of us in our world of vanquished distances and unconquered discord, readers, all of us, whether white-, blackor yellow-skinned, are captured by the camera, from birth to death, in our happiness and our suffering, our work, our joys and our crimes. And yet it is the melancholy that makes the image lively, that makes it human, that touches us. The exhibition teaches pride. Pride in human beauty, wisdom, goodness, decency, and labour. It teaches humility. Humility at human limitations, human poverty and suffering. The improbably spruced up socialite mother from Vogue is the sister of the Negro mom in blue jeans, stretched out with her child on the bare ground.
