SEPTEMBER 12, MONDAY

FAMILY OF MAN

Today I stopped by Mr. K’s, a second hand bookstore in Asheville to look for inexpensive photography books and found my favorite photography book of all time, The Family of Man. The Family of Man was a photography exhibit assembled by Edward Steichen with a forward by Carl Sandburg his brother-in-law and accompanying quoted text from well known writers. It was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955 and later shown over a nine year period around the world in country after country seen by nine million people. The exhibit consists of 503 photographs by 273 artists, known and unknown, from 68 countries. The first paperback catalog of the exhibit was printed by Ridge Press and cost $1.

I knew none of this when I first bought the Ridge Press copy for $1. And I didn’t know much of this when a few days ago I bought a second hand copy printed in Japan for $6 ($18.50 in 1986). And I knew nothing then and very little now of the criticism of eminent critics who said the exhibit was neo colonial, who felt putting words to photographers photos that were not their own was wrong, who thought it was sentimental and on and on. I only learned about the history and the criticism from Wikipedia and dismissed it.

For me nothing of this matters. All that matters is that I responded intensely at 18 to the photographs, almost all of them are photographs of ordinary people doing ordinary things. The exhibit and the book is organized by intense emotions at the various stages of life in culture after culture. It allowed me, and others, to feel the kinship of humans at every corner of the earth, all going through the same life stages. I doubt if any of the 9 million people who saw it had the same critical things to say as the photography experts.

I am sure it affected huge numbers of people to want to do photography. But not me. I have maybe 1000 photography books and my intense response to photography started with The Family of Man. Photographs of people more than any other kind have touched me intensely all my life. But I didn’t get hooked on photographing until the age of 60.

Over the years I have various cameras, but I knew to be a real photographer you had to have a darkroom and had to master the skills of using the chemical baths in low light that let you develope the negatives and then had to have advanced printing devices to produce a printed version. All of the equipment and chemicals as well as the film were expensive. So I sometimes took photographs, and had them printed at dime stores, without producing anything I liked.

Until I was loaned a digital camera in 1998 that produced tiny low resolution photographs that could only fill a quarter of a computer screen. And with that first borrowed digital camera I was hooked. The cost of the cameras, event this first primitive one, were high but what I discovered quickly enough was that you could take as many photographs as you wanted at no cost and that you could process them on a computer and print them on a color printer at very little cost and quite easily. All that was necessary was to slide your finger to make countless adjustments, guided as much by intuition as any particular guidelines. I was entirely self taught and finally settled on about five guidelines. (1) Fill the frame with your subject, which meant getting very close to the person. (2) Take the photographs in good light which usually meant not bright light. (3) Take a large number of photographs and discard all but the best. (4) Have a striking background or have the background out of focus. (5) Have the latest camera you can afford with the latest in camera processing because the camera does most of the work.

That was it. And of course you have to be guided by whatever it is within you that makes you want to photograph something. There is no guide of what to photograph. It is hard enough to do five things intuitively at the same time and to be ready to fire away when something touches you so any more guidelines would be difficult to put into practice.

But coming back to The Family of Man. At first I photographed landscapes whenever one struck me. But over time I have shifted almost entirely to faces or to people close up in a setting that enhances the presence of the person. Steve McCurry, who takes photographs all over the world but focuses on Afghanistan and India is my model. His people are always appealing, almost always dressed in colorful costumes and always in settings that enhance the photograph.

The reason that I photograph people, with them knowing it or not, is simply because the presence of a person of whatever age or gender or social status touches me intensely.

I don’t know if this is because of the influence of The Family of Man for sure, but I think it is. When I bought it again the other day for $6 I couldn’t resist although I already have several copies. Leafing through it touches me with the same intensity I felt at the age of 18. In fact, of all the books that I have read or leafed through in my life the Family of Man would be within the top five of books, along with the Bible, whose presence has stayed with me and continues to touch me.