ABSTRACT
In 1957 the most celebrated Italian humanist photographer, Mario Giacomelli, challenged Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of the village of Scanno, taken in 1952 on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar. Having heard of the place from immigrants in New York after the Second World War, Cartier-Bresson knew that Scanno, in the Abruzzo region, had remained untouched by modernization. Cartier-Bresson’s humorous point of the antiquated dress is replaced with a dream-like scene in which the boy stares uncannily into the camera while two self-absorbed figures shimmer before him. During the postwar period, humanist photography was perceived as a transparent and universal medium and a way of celebrating democracy, brotherhood, and equality. The epic exhibition of humanist photography, Edward Steichen’s The Family of Man first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955, aimed to transmit a message of solidarity among mankind around the world through still images.
