RARE PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF FAMILY OF MAN, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY STEICHEN TO MARGERY LEWIS SMITH, LONGTIME PARTNER OF W. EUGENE SMITH, WITH IMAGES BY BOTH WITHIN

STEICHEN, Edward and SANDBURG, Carl. The Family of Man. [New York]: Published for the Museum of Modern Art by Simon and Schuster, (1955). Quarto, original half black cloth, blue paper boards stamped gold, silver, bronze and black, photographic endpapers; laid-in exhibition sheet, measures 17 by 7 inches. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, a distinctive presentation/association copy boldly inscribed on the title page to W. Eugene Smith’s longtime partner—”To Margery Lewis with devoted admiration, Steichen.” With over 500 rich photogravures including images by both photographers, this special book-club edition is that featured in Parr & Badger II.

“Conceived as an exhibition for MoMA in New York in 1955,” the prestigious Family of Man exhibit and accompanying photobook was supervised by Edward Steichen—a celebration of life that “contains many fine photographs” by leading photographers of the day (Parr & Badger II:218). “The most universally popular photography exhibition ever organized” (Icons of Photography, 16), the Family of Man is still considered the medium’s “landmark show” (Roth, 146). Structured as “a journey through the seven stages of man, from birth to death, [it was] compiled from pictures taken all around the world” (Parr & Badger I:210): with rich, finely screened photogravures of images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Ansel Adams, Margaret Bourke-White, Robert Capa, Bill Brandt, Dorothea Lange, Roy De Carava, Robert Doisneau, Werner Bishof, Brassaï, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Richard Avedon and many others. First published earlier the same year by the Museum of Modern Art, this “special edition published by the Book of the Month Club” is that highlighted in Parr & Badger (II:218). With all 503 exhibition photographs and an additional section on the installation itself. Prologue written by Steichen’s brother-in-law, Carl Sandburg.With exhibition sheet printed with Sandburg’s Prologue laid in. As issued without dust jacket; without original box. This rare presentation/association copy is from the library of photographer Margery Lewis Smith, whose images are seen within (18, 162). Smith was the longtime partner of W. Eugene Smith, whose four exhibition photographs printed herein (47, 126, 148, 192) include his Walk to Paradise Garden (291)—“an image known and loved by thousands” (Johnson, W. Eugene Smith) that “would achieve its greatest fame in 1955, when Steichen chose it to be the concluding image both for his landmark Family of Man exhibition… and in the subsequent widely read book of the same name” (Hughes, 192).

Images fine and bright, some edge-wear and dampstaining to fragile boards, joints expertly repaired. An extremely good presentation copy with an especially memorable association.