ABSTRACT
Widely debated, Edward Steichen's The Family of Man became extraordinarily popular, and its close to 500 photographs have been seen by around 10 million visitors at 100 or so sites worldwide. According to Steichen’s own explanation, ‘the gay Pan-like Peruvian boy playing the flute’ expressed ‘a little trace of mischief, but much sweetness – that’s the song of life’. The Berlin Tagesspiegel criticized the show with its ‘photo of a Peruvian shepherd’s boy playing the flute’, for it ‘represents something that lacks truth, namely that life consisted only of sweetness, of eternal youth, and of lovely and friendly melodies’. Delaney, after outlining various themes of The Family of Man, similarly stated that ‘the arrangement was musical, rather than directly didactic — which surely contributed to the exhibit’s popularity’. This distinguished the show from Weimar political exhibitions and didactic installations of the interwar period. Norman summarized that ‘almost everything to which Stieglitz most objected was done in one form.
