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MY BROTHER'S IMAGE
Humanism and Photography since Steichen
 After
John Stathatos' splendid Vindication of Tlön, it will
be difficult, for a few years at last, to pursue the relationship
between photography and the fantastic very much further. Another
challenge presents itself: what of the real world? There will
be nothing conceptual about this proposed investigation of
the real, which intends to focus above all on the experience
of humanity and its peoples.
In its role of catalyst, The Family of Man (1955) represented
a key moment in the history of photography. In the midst of
the cold war, at a time when colonialism and racial discrimination
were implicated in a series of murderous projects, photography
was commiting itself to the assertion that, in the words of
Carl Sandburg, one of the exhibition's participants, "there
is but one man in the world, and his name is All Men".
Roland Barthes was no doubt correct in stigmatising (in one
of his contemporary Mythologies) the "adamism" of
Edward Steichen, the Family of Man's curator; but having criticised
its ahistoricity, it was perhaps unreasonable of Barthes not
to take into consideration the particular circumstances which
surrounded the genesis of this unique project.
Today, when racist theories have yet to be defeated, hatred
and contempt are grounded above all upon the brutal affirmation
of repressed or dominant identities. The question then seems
to be whether, drawing upon its own resources in order to
demonstrate the essential affinity of all peoples, photography
can contribute to moderating the destruction caused by conflicts
imaged no less than physical.
The struggle between what Steichen called "the creative
force of truth" and the "corrosive evil inherent
in the lie" has not been suspended, but the background
has changed. The system of ideas differentiating the two camps
in a sometimes simplistic way was swept aside by what Cornilios
Castoriadis identified in the early nineties as a "wave
of eclecticism, collage and invertebrate syncretism".
At the heart of the changes which have taken place in the
ideological and technological perspectives of the century's
last decade, we find the image.
Having chased the tail of contemporary art, and after much
soulful gazing into the mirror, photography is recovering
the energy of its glory days, seemingly determined to open
its eyes to the world and its inhabitants. The right to representation,
needles to say, is not predicated upon belonging either to
"newsworthy" Liberation Fronts or to the "People"
section of fashionable magazines; nor, on the other hand,
can the field be left to enervated exoticism or its younger
sibling, the mannerism of banality. Between these two extremes
lies the vast range of approaches dedicated to respect. For
many years, Dorothea Lange posted these words by Francis Bacon
on her darkroom door: "The contemplation of things as
they are, without substitution or imposture, without error
or confusion, is, in itself, nobler than an entire harvest
of invention".
I hope I am not wrong in believing that since its first appearance,
photography has more often contributed to revelation than
to falsity or obfuscation; but I can't help wondering whether,
among such a proliferation of images and messages, it can
still make a contribution to togetherness. Let us see.
ERIC
AUZOUX
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