Photography after Photography: Gender, Genre, History
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is Professor Emerita of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books, including Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices; Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation; Rosemary Laing; Chair à canons: Photographie, discours, féminisme; and coauthor of Birgit Jürgenssen.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor of Art History at York University.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is Professor Emerita of the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of several books, including Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices; Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation; Rosemary Laing; Chair à canons: Photographie, discours, féminisme; and coauthor of Birgit Jürgenssen.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor of Art History at York University.
The Family of Man: Refurbishing Humanism for a Postmodern Age (2004)
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Published:April 2017
In this essay Solomon-Godeau explores what is coded by absence in The Family of Man, one of the most famous projects in post–World War II photography. Solomon-Godeau examines the recent permanent restaging of the exhibition in Luxembourg and its prior history. For Solomon-Godeau, and drawing on the arguments of Viktoria Schmitt-Linsonoff, this Cold War blockbuster is better viewed not so much as a token of American triumphalism but as a covert symptom of American trauma. The nature of this trauma is complex, occasioned by the war itself, the revelation of genocide, the new threat of nuclear destruction, and the...
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