About The Family of No Man

The Family of No Man will be one of the main curatorial events at Arles Cosmos 2018. It will consist of an open call to female and inter-gender artists working in the medium of photography. The call will result to a series of outdoor & indoor installations and activities that will take place during the six days of the fair. The aim of this radical curatorial proposition is to revisit Edward Steichen’s original Family of Man exhibition (1955), which, in its time, was described “as one of the most ambitious undertakings in an art museum”. The Family of No Man will seek to replace the visual register of white male dominance inherent in the original project with an inclusive visual platform of how the world is seen today through non-male eyes.

What winners receive

All participants are guaranteed one image of the curators choice that will be included in the exhibition.

Historical context and referents

The Family of Man referenced in this proposal is a landmark curatorial and editorial project in the history of photography. The ambitious exhibition, which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) in 1955, brought together 503 pictures by 273 photographers from 68 countries. Its ambition was to provide a comprehensive exploration of photography’s capacity to record human relations, showcasing the universality of human experience and to serve as a forthright declaration of human solidarity in the decade following World War II. The featured material was selected and edited by Edward Steichen and his assistant Wayne Miller over 2,000,000 photographs, with the conviction that photography could capture “the gamut of life from birth to death”. The exhibition took the form of a photo-essay that celebrated all aspects of human experience. It toured the world for eight years attracting more than nine million visitors. Its final complete version was permanently installed in Clervaux Castle (Luxemburg) in 1994. Likewise, the visual essay book that accompanied it –MoMA’s most popular publication ever with more than 300,000 copies sold– turned into a foundational volume in the culture of photography, familiar to pretty much any photographer working in the latter half of the 20th century. But it also had had tremendous popular appeal. Its layout brought together 503 images by 273 photographers. Edited in a similar way by Steichen, as a symphony of voices, it showed people around the world working, playing, fighting and loving. The images of the greatest exponents of humanist photography of the time were accompanied by literary quotes, orchestrating a grand visual and emotional vision of humanity. This project seeks to expand on the book and its narratives.

How to enter

• The call is addressed to non-male photographers.
• Images must relate to one ore more of the following categories:
  1. Death/Trauma
  2. Economy
  3. Ecology
  4. Family
  5. Gender
  6. Labor
  7. Sexuality
  8. Politics
  9. Technology

Judging criteria

• Works used for the exhibition will be judged for their importance to the categories outlined by the curatorial team. Participants are encouraged to send uncensored and open images. There is no restriction to subject matter or image type so long as they fit the category.
• The submission fee for Family of No Man guarantees at least one image by each person submitting will be used within the public exhibition.
• The curators will be choosing which images to include.
• Winners will therefore receive a guaranteed place in the exhibition with one or more images and their names will be included in the exhibition. Cosmos is an affiliate photobook platform working with Les Recontres d’Arles. The platform is internationally regarded within the main program and focuses on external project co-ordination. Up to 10,000 visitors will see the see the Family of No Men exhibition in the time frame it commences.

Juror information

Brad FEUERHELM (b. 1977, America) is a photography collector, artist, curator, dealer, and writer on photography. He has published several books on his work and has written for different magazines both in print and on-line. He is the Managing Editor of American Suburb X.

Natasha CHRISTIA (b. 1976, Greece) is an independent writer, curator and educator based in Barcelona. She is also a collection consultant and a dealer specialized in fine art photography and photobooks.

Curatorial approach

The Family of No Man will attempt a critical revision of Steichen’s seminal exhibition and publication that has raised both appraisal and controversy for its lack of anti-war rhetoric after the bloodshed of World War II and for involuntarily encouraging a US view propaganda amidst Cold War apocalyptic scenario. Following the patterns of the original project, our proposition will be to offer a platform of how the world today is seen through non-male eyes. The visual discourse of the project will be informed by the contemporary visual languages/media and technologies, and will respond to the ongoing public debate on gender equality. At the same time it will tackle how photography distanced from male narratives can be a conveyor of an open-ended identity status, suggesting a re-examination of the meta-narratives proposed in the original. If the male sign usually operates as a solid narrative object, here the word will belong to the non-male “Other” in the need and right of privilege and reinvigoration.

The content elements through which the curatorial project will be developed are the following ones:

• Different ephemeral outdoor and indoor installations at Cosmos Arles Books 2018.
• A program of activities (talks, panels, performances) that will form part of the program of Cosmos Arles Books whose main topics is “Exhibiting the Photobook”. The list of participants (due to be confirmed) will include artists, curators, with a strong emphasis on leading female representation.
• Online platforms: Their content will be updated in the period before and during the celebration of the fair and the content. They will be incorporated in the elements of the installations so that the public can have access to them
• A future publication: We propose to also publish an update to the original catalogue for Steichen’s exhibition in which the aims of our re-examination will add to the historiography of photography.