| Abstract: | Placing Edward Steichen’s 1955 photographic exhibition, The Family of Man, in Guatemala reorients the show’s Cold War geography and challenges the limits of Steichen’s humanism. Steichen’s orientation was East–West, his purpose to break down what he considered to be a nihilistic binary between the United States and the Soviet Union. A North–South axis brings with it issues of hereditary, festering colonialism and comprehensive exploitation of indigenous populations, who, in the visual realm of Life magazine, were one source of the sorts of exotic images, stamped with the seal of authenticity, which made their way into The Family of Man. It is important to see how the exhibition was displaced from the stable terms of exchange with its assumed audience through its deployment as a mobile element of the United States Information Agency’s contribution to the cultural diplomacy of the United States. After reviewing the message that Steichen constructed for the exhibition, the essay will examine the uncertain, Cold War terrain that greeted it in post-revolutionary Guatemala. The essay discusses the two impresarios who made possible the appearance of The Family of Man in the Casa de Protocolo: Edward Steichen, the originator of the exhibition, and Nelson Rockefeller, the master of the bewildering context surrounding this photographic work. I conclude with some reflections on present-day humanistic projects in Guatemala. |
