Love’s Labour’s Lost

From women’s eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

Love’s Labour ’s Lost. Act iv. Sc. 3.

A new round of art-making is soon to begin for the upcoming Rooftop Art Show at the Luggage Store Annex which will open on Saturday, November 9.  It would be good to take a look back at how we came to settle on “A Slice of Life” as the title for our show.

Back in July, there was a 40-year old photo that took the internet by storm. 

In late July 1973, Joseph Crachiola was wandering the streets of Mount Clemens, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, with his camera. As a staff photographer for the Macomb Daily, he was expected to keep an eye out for good feature images — "those little slices of life that can stand on their own."

Joe Crachiola/Courtesy of The Macomb Daily

At the time, we were looking at how we might be able to use Edward Steichen's, The Family of Man, both the exhibit and the book, as a master work of art that could help students to understand the art of  the curating and designing an exhibit.  The Family of Man uses photography to explore all aspects of life.

The exhibition was created by Edward Steichen as a collection of snapshots and emotions that aimed to convey a message of peace in the midst of the Cold War. While the collection still bears the traces of its context of creation, visitor reactions continue to reflect the impact of these images, which remain relevant to this day. Some have even become icons in the history of photography. 

According to Edward Steichen himself, The Family of Man was the most significant work of his career. In a manner that was both unusual and visionary at the time, the collection condensed his approach to photography as well as his understanding of settings: the photographs were chosen according to their capacity of communication, while the layout allowed visitors to immerse themselves in a photographic essay. The collection embodies an astonishing summary of Steichen's career as an exhibition curator at MoMA.

— http://www.steichencollections.lu/en/The-Family-of-Man 

Steichen's brother in law, Carl Sandburg, famed American poet and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1951 wrote the text below as a prologue to the Family of Man exhibition.  It seems appropriate to share the words and perspective of "The Poet of the People" on this Labor Day.

Endpapers for hardback book of The Family of Man, published in 1955.

PROLOGUE by Carl Sandburg 

The Family of Man 

The photographic exhibition created by Edward Steichen 

for The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1955

The first cry of a newborn baby in Chicago or Zamboango, in Amsterdam or Rangoon, has the same pitch and key, each saying, “I am! I have come through! I belong! I am a member of the Family.” 

Many the babies and grownups here from photographs made in sixty-eight nations round our planet Earth. You travel and see what the camera saw. The wonder of the human mind, heart, wit and instinct, is here. You might catch yourself saying, “I’m not a stranger here.” 

People! flung wide and far, born into toil, struggle, blood and dreams, among lovers, eaters, drinkers, workers, loafers, fighters, players, gamblers. Here are ironworkers, bridgemen, musicians, sandhogs, miners, builders of huts and skyscrapers, jungle hunters, landlords and the landless, the loved and the unloved, the lonely and abandoned, the brutal and the compassionate—one big family hugging close to the ball of Earth for its life and being. 

Here or there you may witness a startling harmony where you say, “This will be haunting me a long time with a loveliness I hope to understand better.”

In a seething of saints and sinners, winners or losers, in a womb of superstition, faith, genius, crime, sacrifice, here is the People, the one and only source of armies, navies, work-gangs, the living flowing breath of the history of nations, ever lighted by the reality or illusion of hope. Hope is a sustaining human gift. 

Everywhere is love and love-making, weddings and babies from generation to generation keeping the Family of Man alive and continuing. Everywhere the sun, moon and stars, the climates and weathers, have meanings for people. Though meanings vary, we are alike in all countries and tribes in trying to read what sky, land and sea say to us. Alike and ever alike we are on all continents in the need of love, food, clothing, work, speech, worship, sleep, games, dancing, fun. From the tropics to arctics humanity lives with these needs so alike, so inexorably alike. 

Hands here, hands gnarled as thorntree roots and others soft as faded rose leaves, Hands reaching, praying and groping, hands holding tools, torches, brooms, fishnets, hands doubled in fists of flaring anger, hands moving in caress of beloved faces. The hands and feet of children playing ring-around-a-rosy—countries and languages different but the little ones alike in playing the same game. 

Here are set forth babies arriving, suckling, growing into youths, restless and questioning. Then as grownups, they seek and hope. They mate, toil, fish, quarrel, sing, fight, pray, on all parallels and meridians having likeness. The earliest man, ages ago, had tools, weapons, cattle, as seen in his cave drawings. And like him the latest man of our day has his tools, weapons, cattle. The earliest man struggled through inexpressibly dark chaos of hunger, fear, violence, sex. A long journey it has been from that early Family of Man to the one of today which has become a still more prodigious spectacle. 

If the human face is “the masterpiece of God” it is here then in a thousand fateful registrations. Often the faces speak what words can never say. Some tell of eternity and others only the latest tattlings. Child faces of blossom smiles or mouths of hunger are followed by homely faces of majesty carved and worn by love, prayer and hope, along with others light and carefree as thistledown in a late summer wind. Faces having land and sea on them, faces honest as the morning sun flooding a clean kitchen with light, faces crooked and lost and wondering where to go this afternoon and tomorrow morning. Faces in crowds, laughing and windblown leaf faces, profiles in an instant of agony, mouths in a dumb show mockery lacking speech, faces of music in gay song or a twist of pain, a hate ready to kill, or calm and ready-for-death faces. Some of them are worth a long look now and deep contemplation later.  Faces betokening a serene blue sky or faces dark with storm winds and lashing night rain. And faces beyond forgetting, written over with faiths in men and dreams of man surpassing himself. An alphabet here and a multiplication table of living breathing human faces. 

In the times to come as the past there will be generations taking hold as though loneliness and the genius of struggle has always dwelt in the hearts of the pioneers. To the question, “What will the story be of the Family of Man across the near or far future?” Some would reply, “For the answers read if you can the strange and baffling eyes of youth.”

There is only one man in the world

and his name is All Men. 

There is only one woman in the world

and her name is All Women.

There is only one child in the world

and the child’s name is All Children.  

A camera testament, a drama of the grand canyon of humanity, an epic woven of fun, mystery and holiness—here is the Family of Man!