 Good evening Anke. Thank you for being here with us at Moudin and thank you for having accepted the invitation to participate in the public program for the Mi Family platform. We are lucky to have you and discuss with you tonight the exhibition The Family of Man at Watchtation. You are the curator of the exhibition at Siena and also the exhibition is in the Chateau Clairvaux and first of all could you describe the exhibition and put it in a context. Well thank you Caroline for the introduction and also thank you for the invitation. Yes so The Family of Man to present it shortly in some numbers. So The Family of Man has been shown for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955 and it is composed of 503 pictures coming from 273 photographers from 68 countries. After 1955 it traveled around the world during 10 years and was seen by 10 million visitors and probably this the most discussed exhibition of the history of photography and there are some reasons for it. First it's ambitious scope and it's very ambitious project and also it's a big collective effort with a strong curatorial project behind and a rather unusual and extraordinary scenography for that time. For the context you could say that The Family of Man what the anniversary exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art for the 25th anniversary and the MoMA was a museum that collected very early on so from its creation in 1930 photography as an art which is quite exceptional also and Edward Steichen joined the Museum of Modern Art in 1947 he worked with the museum already before and I like to see The Family of Man as a condensation of his private and professional experiences because Steichen he was trained as a lithographer in his early years also trained as a painter he was a curator he was a film director and also in photography he had many careers there is a monography about him edited by Todd Brando and Bill Ewing which is entitled Lives in Photography and this describes or the title says very well already that it's not only one career in photography because there he started with pictorialism to defend photography as an art form and he made also fashion photography he made straight photography he also photographed or was documenting during the two world wars which had a very strong impact on him and also on his artistic and personal career and Steichen also saw the family of man as the artwork of his life so his major oeuvre and so at that time when he was at MoMA he was not anymore interested in in defending photography as an art form because he thought that this combat was done but he wanted to explore photography and its power of communication and so he explored this in the exhibition the family of man and so what he is exploring further with the exhibition and also with the special sonography he puts it in is how to convey a message and how to transport it further what makes the exhibition I mean you already pointed out some things what makes it so special why is it one of the most important exhibitions if not the most discussed one in the history of photography yeah what is special about it I will start with the ambitious project so that I mentioned earlier so in 1951 at what Steichen starts collecting photographs so he traveled to Europe to meet photographers he has his friend and colleague the Thia Lang organizing a meeting with almost 40 photographers in Chicago he has his assistant and friend photographer Wayne Miller who has a look at all the life magazine archive and also at the Magnum archive additionally they put ads in magazines to collect photographs and at the end of this process they collect so it's a mythical number we don't know exactly how many but between four and seven million photographs so to make their selection of the five hundred three that compose finally the the exhibition and the basic line and the basic idea is I would say not as the criticism of the exhibition often says that we are all alike but that within our differences we have more things to share than that then that separate us and he uses photography as the illustration of his concept and this single photographer like this is put behind the bigger idea so he uses photographs from different contexts from mainly photojournalists to to fit into his idea and to compose a new story to compose a new visual narration and he acts in that sense less like a curator or like we understand the work of a curator today but more like an editor or also like a film director and the exhibition is also often described as an oversized live magazine where you're wandering through and you could also say that Stuyken uses the technique of cinematographic montage to compose the bigger picture that in the end makes the exhibition and here I would like to quote David Campani also from his book on photographs and he says on photographs they cannot carry meanings in any straightforward way a single photograph is unable to account for the appearance it describes or even account for itself and a little bit later he says meaning is made as much between images as within them and this is exactly what happens with the family of men and we could also compare this montage and the meaning that comes from the start again we could also compare this kind of montage and the meaning that comes from from the picture but also from the dialogue of the pictures with the visitor to Clément Cogitore's work that he has in me family the evil eye where he is composing a new film of pictures or of scenes that he gets from getty images what is also very special about the the exhibition the family of man is the sonography Edward Stuyken had been working already with the photographer and Bauhaus architect Herbert Bayer for two exhibitions at MoMA and they were exploring yes a visual theory of Herbert Bayer so he created a visual diagram that where he says a visitor is able to grasp more of the pictures in the exhibition than just on the horizontal line at 160 centimeters so they put the pictures on the bottom they put it on yes on the floor and also on the ceiling they took it from the wall and put it into the middle of the exhibition space and this is exactly also what Edward Stuyken applies with his architect Paul Rudolph also coming from the Bauhaus for the family of men and the effect this yes this mise-en-scene has on the visitor is very strong impact so because you participate physically in another way in the exhibition and also emotionally you actively take part in the exhibition I think what is important for the family of men and to understand it in its entirety is really to see it physically to experience it yes in the exhibition room and to to see what effect it makes on you one last question for me what happened with the exhibition after it was exhibited in New York in 55 after it was at MoMA so there were several things going on and I would like to start with the yes with the traveling exhibitions after MoMA and after they saw that it was such a huge success at MoMA they decided together with with the USIA the US Information Agency to let it travel so they produced 10 copies of the exhibition and sent the sets all over the world all over the world during 10 years and it went in over 150 museums and was seen by over 10 billion visitors so impressive numbers and at the end of this world tour it came to Luxembourg and stayed here as a gift from the American government on the wish of Steichen in 1989 it was the CNA so the CNA the duty of is well which was created by the Ministry of Culture and it was the big first job of this cultural Institute to restore the original panels and to re-exhibit them in in their historical form in the castle so it's now installed at Castle Clairvaux it's in the north of Luxembourg and we are exhibiting there the family of man as an over so it's an exhibition of an historical exhibition of course with with our interpretation today and it is accompanied by a mediation program and also by research program of course but we for us it's important to respect it as a whole and as a work of art so we don't intervene into the structure of this work and over the years it also got the recognition from the UNESCO it's now integrated in the register of the memory of the world and what happened also during the world tour and after it was a whole yes or let's say what happened during the world tour and after the world tour was also that these many receptions from all over the world and many reactions got collected and from today the reception history that is still going on of the family of man and during during its world tour the slogan that traveled with the exhibition was it's the show that you see with your heart and I would say that this divide between the heart and the intellect is something that stayed in its reception because by the general public it was a very enthusiast reaction to the exhibition and you could say that it's it's really the nerve of the time during the Cold War and during the 50s and 60s when it traveled and people felt connected to it and like these idea of sharing and of brotherhood and yes accepted the idea and on the other hand there were the intellectuals like yes or art critics also like for example Ronald Bartow who wrote a very influential critique about the exhibition and others followed him in that that pointed to the romanticism and naive worldview and also to the ethnicity of the exhibition and today I would say that there is a real reassessment of the exhibition of the exhibition in its context and also of the criticism of the exhibition in its context in its historical context and this reassessment allows to take a closer look at the visual strategies of the family of men to see that it's a real complex visual narration and in a sort of deductive statement made with photographs that is quite courageous for the time of its creation and that can be seen also as a declaration of human rights and as but it's inography it can also be seen as a democratic participatory statement something else and there I I would like to connect it to the project of me family to the exhibition so there was also a real curatorial reception so there were a whole range of exhibitions that followed the family of men after its world tour and also already during its world tour for example there were projects that took up the the concept quite literally for example the family of children or the family of women other projects tried to shift a little bit the view or the frame how to look at the world there were projects in Germany called Welt Ausstellung der Fotografie or for example to present a communist view of the world entitled from Gluck des Menschen and from the 80s on this view on the world changed a little bit the family of men was not responded to literally as a statement but it was more taken like a starting point to create some something else and to create a new visual argument that was not linear and that became plural and more complex and I like the the interview also of Francesco Bonami that is also on the platform when he said so we had to create a cacophony in the exhibition that responds to the modern world and something that these projects all have in common I would say is that they are becoming more self-reflexive and they try to yes they ask more questions than they give answers necessarily but something that connects them is always to see yes how can we grasp the world how can we maybe not pin down but how can we respond to something like environmental issues like identity landscape human beings and these exhibitions respond to changing world and a continuing assessment of our relationship to the world but also an assessment of how art corresponds to the world and it's also a negotiation I think to define what is the self and what is the other and this is constantly shifting today and what I see also in these projects is the necessity of art to interpret and question what surrounds us and similarly also the necessity and also the responsibility of a contemporary art museum to to respond to this and to discuss these issues with its communities so yes I would like to finish and congratulate for the exhibition and also for the digital platform which I think is really something that corresponds to the world today and we thank you for your contribution and for sharing your knowledge on the family of man and congratulate you on being the curator of such a great show and giving us the opportunity to follow up and still be curious about the world thank you thank