A TMD TTT,The Traffic in Photographs A 1. Introduction: Between Estheticism and Scientism How can we work toward an active, critical understanding of | the prevailing conventions of representation, particularly those 1. Aneator shorter vrsonef this essay wos publshedin—_suerounding photography?! The discourse that surrounds photo- the Australian Photography Conferenes Papers. Mltourne, graphy speaks paradoxically of discipline and freedom, of rigorous 11980. | am grateful to the editors of Working Papers on ‘graphy speaks paradoxically of discipline and freedom, of rigorous ae cats Kamser'wolcon or —tuths and unleashed pleasures. Here then, atleast by vietue of a the opportu to present the preliminary version there ced to contain the tensions inherent in this paradox, is the site of a certain shell game, a certain dance, even a certain politics. In a effect, we are invited to dance between photogeaphic truths and photographic pleasures with very little awareness of the floor uscles that make this seemingly effortless movement boards and possible by ciscourse, then, T mean the forceful ply of tact beliefs and \d responsible attitudes to the semiotic workings of responsive photography. In itself constrained, determined by, and contributing A to “larger” cultural, political, and economic forces, this discourse both legitimates and directs the multiple flows of the traffic in ages and constrains our abilities to photographs. It quietly m: produce and consume photographic imagery, while often encour. aging, especially in its most publicized and glamorous contempo: y rary variants, an apparently limitless semiotic freedom, a timeless dimension of esthetic appreciation. Encoded in academic and “popular” texts, in books, newspapers, magazines, in institutional a and commercial displays, in the design of photographic equipment, in schooling, in everyday social rituals, and — through the work ings of these contexts — within photographs themselves; th course exerts a force that is simultaneously material and symbolic, inextricably linking language and power. Above all, in momentarily w isolating this historically specific ideology and practice of repre sentation we shouldn't forget that it gives concrete form to — thus | n enerTraffic in Photographs lending both truth and pleasure to — other discursively-borne ideologies: of “the family,” of “sexuality,” of “consumption” and “production,” of “government,” of “technology,” of “nature,” of iad so on. Herein lies a major “communications,” of “history, aspect of the affiliation of photography with power. And as in all culture that grows from a system of oppressions, the discourses that carry the greater force in everyday life are those that emanate from power, that give voice to an institutional authority. For us, today, these affiemative and supervisory voices speak primarily for apital, and subordinately for the state. This essay is a pract search for internal inconsistencies, and thus for some of the weak: nesses in this linkage of language and power. Photography is haunted by two chattering ghosts: that of bour- ‘geois science and that of bourgeois art. The first goes on about the truth of appearances, about the world reduced to a positive ensem ble of facts, to a constellation of knowable and possessable objects. The second specter has the historical mission of apologizing for and redeeming the atrocities committed by the subservient — and ‘more than specteal — hand of science. This second specter offers lus a reconstructed subject in the luminous person of the artist, Thus, from 1839 onward, affirmative commentaries on photo- graphy have engaged in a comic, shufiling dance between techno logical determinism and auteurism, between faith in the abjective powers of the machine and a belief in the subjective, imaginative ilities of the artist. In persistently arguing for the harmonious coexistence of optical truths and visual pleasures, in yoking a pos tivist scientism with a romantic metaphysics, photographic dis course has attempted to bridge the philosophical and institutional separation of scientific and artistic practices that has characterized bourgeois society from the late eighteenth century onward. The defenders of photography have both confirmed and rebelled against the Kantian cleavage of epistemology and esthetics; some argue for truth, some for pleasure, and most for both, usually out of opposite sides of the mouth, (And a third voice, usually affiliated with liberalism, sporadic ly argues for an ethical dimension to photographic meaning. This argument attempts to fuse the separ: ated spheres of fact and value, to geaft a usually reformist morality ‘onto empiricism.) This philosophical shell game is evidence of a sustained crisis at the very center of bourgeois culture, a crisis rooted in the emergence of s and technology as seemingly utonomous productive forces. Bourgeois culture has had to con: tend with the threat and the promise of the machine, which it continues to both resist and embrace.’ The fragmentary and me- chanically derived photographic image is centeal to this attitude of crisis and ambivalence; the embracing issue is the nature of work and creativity under capitalism. Above all else, the ideological force of photographic art in modern society may lie in the apparent rec: onciliation of human creative energies with a scientifically guided process of mechanization, suggesting that despite the modern 2. In 4790. Kant sepsrates knowledge and ploasure in a ‘way that flly anticipates the bastard satus of pnotography: "art which is adequate tothe cognition of possible object. performs the ations requisite therfore moray in order to make aca, tis mechanical art but thas as imme date design the feoing of pleasure. is called aesthetca! art” immanuel Kant, Criigue of Judgement. vans. JH Bernard, New York 1951, p. 188) ‘A number of texts Seams relovant to the question of the photographer as mere "appendage tothe machine.” OF , , eespoctic importance i Berard Edelman's Ownership of the Image: Elements for a Marsist Theory of Law Londen, 1979. Less dvetlyrelted, but valuabo are Harry Braver ‘man's Labor and Menopoly Capita. New York, 1974, Aired Soln-Rethel's Intellectual and Moral Labor, Lordon, 1878, and an esaay by Rayrnond Wiliams. The Romantic Asin Culture and Soetey, Now York, 1858, pp. 30:48, 3. am gratetl to Sally Stein for discussions about the Felationship bewoen scioniic management and the evel pment of mechanized visual eure in the early ten {eth century and especialy for showing me an unpublished ‘essay writen in 1960 on thisisaue, "The Graphie Ordering ‘of Dasire. Modernization of The Ladies’ Home Journal 1914-1998" Her enicims and support were very impor tant Also, Bruce Kaipor dasorves thanks fora lucid oss “The Human Object and its Captalist Image,” Lot Curve, No", 1976, pp. 40:60, and for 8 number of conversations on thie subject, Tragfic in Photographs Industrial division of labor, and specifically despite the industrial: zation of cultural work, despite the historical obsolesence, margin. alization and degradation of artisanal and manual modes of repre sentation, the category of th purely mental, imaginative command over the camera.’ But uring the second half of the nineteenth century, a funda: ‘mental tension developed between uses of photography that fulfill a bourgeois conception of the selfand uses that seek to establish ind delimit the terrain of the other. Thus every work of photo- artist lives on in the exercise of a geaphic art has its lurking, objectifying inverse in the archives of the police. To the extent that bourgeois society depends on the system atic defense of property relations, to the extent that the legal basis of the self lies in property rights, every proper portrait of a“man of genius” made by a “man of genius” has its counterpart in a mug shot. Both attempts are motivated by an uneasy belief in the cate {gory of the individual. Thus also, every romantic landscape finds its deadly echo in the aerial view of a targeted terrain. And to the extent that modern sexuality has been invented and channeled by organized medicine, every eroticized view of the body bears a co: vert relation to the clinical depiction of anatomy. With the rise of the modern social sciences, a regularized flow ‘ed between fully-human of symbolic and material power is engine subject and less-than-fully-human object along vectors of ra and class. The social-scientistic appropriation of photography led toa genre | would call instrumental realism, representational pro jects devoted to new techniques of social diagnosis and control, to -ategorization, and isolation of an otherness the systematic naming, thought to be determined by biology and manifested through the language” of the body itself Early anthropological, criminological and psychiatric photogeaphy, as well as motion-study photogeaphy uused somewhat later in the scientific analysis and management of the labor process, constitute ambitious attempts to link optical empiricism with abstract, statistical teuth, to move from the speci ficity of the body to abstract, mathematical laws of human nature Thus photography was hitched to the locomotive of positivism But consider for a moment the symbolist cult of metaphor, so central to the rhetoric of emergent avant-garde art photography in the United States in the first quarter of this century. In its attempt to establish the free-floating metaphorical play, or equivalence, of signifiers, this symbolist-influenced photography was fundamen tally re the outcome of a desire to seize a small area of crew tive autonomy from a tainted, instrumentalized medium, a medium that had demonstrated repeatedly its complicity with the forces of industrialism. 1 implicitly contrasted to the slavish metonomy of both instrumental realism and the sentimental realism of late nineteenth-century fam- ily photography. With symbolism the ultimate goal of abstraction also looms, but in metaphysical and spiritualist rather than posit vist guise. But both modern science and modernist art end up Wor was the free play of metaphorical associations wasTraffic in Photographs shipping in floating cathedrals of formal, abstract, mathematical relations and “laws,” Perhaps the fundamental question to be asked is whether or not traditional photographic representation, whether symbolist or realist in its dominant formal rhetoric, can transcend the pervasive logic of the commodity form, the exchange abstrac tion that haunts the culture of capitalism. Despite its origins in a radical refusal of instrumental meaning, symbolism appears to have been absorbed by mass culture, enlisted in the spectacle that gives imaginary flesh to the abstract cegime of commodity exchange. No theory of photography can fail to deal with the hidden unity of these extremes of photog aphic practice without lapsing into ‘mere cultural promotion, into the intellectual background-music that welcomes photography into the shopping mall of ically administered high culture that bas, in the period, become increasingly indistinguishable from mass culeure in its structural dependence on forms of publicity and stardom. The goals of a critical theory of photogeaphy ought, ultimately, to in volve the practical, to help point the way to a radical, reinvented cultural practice. Other more powerful challenges to the order of monopoly capitalism need to be discovered and invented; resis tances that unite culture and politics. Symbolic revolts are not enough, nor is 4 purely instrumental conception of politics. This essay is an attempt to pose questions that I take to be only prelimi nary, but necessary, steps in that direction. LL. Universal Language It goes almost without saying that photogeaphy emerged and proliferated as a mode of communication within the larger context of a developing capitalist world order. No previous economy con stituted a world order in the same sense. AS an inherently expan nist economic system, capitalism seeks ultimately to unity the globe in a single system of commodity production and exchange Even tribal and feudal at the periphery of the capitalist system are drastically transformed by the pressures exerted from the aggressive centers of finance and trade, These forces cause local economies and cultures to lose much of theis self sufficiency, their manner of being tied by necessity and tradition to a specific local ecology. This process of global colonization, initially demand ing the outright conquest, extermination and pacification of native peoples, began in earnest in the sixteenth century, a period of expanding mercantile capitalism. In the late twentieth century this, process continues in a fashion more intensive than extensive, as modern capitalism encounters national political insurrections throughout the colonized world and attempts to fortify ts position against a crisis that is simultaneously political, economic, and eco: logical, a crisis that is internal as well as external. Despite these changes, a common logic of capital accumulation links, for exam: ple, the European slave trade in West Africa in the seventeenth and 4. Foran sari ciscussion ofthe relation between symbol ist and realist photography see my "On the Invention of Protogapiie Meaning” in ths volume5, A uso intraducton to some ofthe cultural implications Gf an international captalst economy can be found in Samir Aia’s “Ia raise of Sosa,” in dmperatism and Unequal Development. Neve York, 1977, pp. 73-8. Ih this conmeeton, a recent and perhaps sardoris omark by He Fold Rosenberg comes to mind. Today, al modes of visa fexctaton, from Benin ols to East Indian chin are bath antemporancnus and American” (Harold Rosenberg, The Problam of Realy” in Amariean Chlzaton:A Porat trom the 200 Century, ed by Daniel J. Boorstin, London, 1972, 305) Traffic in Photographs eighteenth centuries to the late twentieth-century electronics sweatshops operated by American multinationals in Singapore and sia. And today, even established as well as recently insurgent socialist economies are increasingly forced to adjust to the pres: sures of a global system of currency domi national enterprises of the We: ‘What are we to make then, of the oft-repeated claim that pho tography constitutes a “universal language?" Almost from 1839 to the present, this honorific has been expansively and repetitively voiced by photographers, intellectuals, journalists, cultural impre sarios and advertising copy writers. Need I even cite examples? But the very ubiquity of this cliché has lent it a commonsensical armor that deflects serious critical questions. The “universal language” ated by the large multi ige myth seems so central, s0 full of social implications, that I'd like to trace the argument as it surfaced and resurfaced at three different historical conjunctures. An initial qualification seems important here. The claim for semantic universality depends on a more fundamental conceit: the at belief that photography constitutes a language in its own right photography is 20 an independent or autonomous language sys: tem, but depends on larger discursive conditions, invariably includ- ing those established by the system of verbal-written language meaning is always a hybrid construction, the out come oF an interplay of iconic, graphic, and narrative conventions. Despite a certain fugitive moment of semantic and formal auton: omy — the Holy Grail of most modernist analytic criticism — the photograph is invariably accompanied by, and situated within, an overt oF covert tex Even at the level of the artificially “isolated image, photographic signification is exercised in terms of pictorial ntions that are never “purely” photographic, After all, the dominant spatial code in the Western pictorial tradition is still that Of linear perspective, institutionalized in the fifteenth and six teenth centuries, Having made this point, only in passing and only too briefly, suppose we examine what is necessarily the dependent claim, a claim grounded in the dubious conception of a “photogea- phic language.” My first example consists of two texts that constituted part of the initial euphoric chorus that welcomed and promoted the in- vention of photography in 1839. In reading these, we'll move “backwards,” as it were, from the frontiers of photography’s early proliferation to the ceremonial site of .e geographical movement within the wention, tracing a kind of, ame period of emergence Early in 1840, a glowing newspaper account of the daguerreo- jandably enough as the “daguerrco: ) was published in Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati was a busy center for tiver-borne shipping in what was then the western United States, a city that would soon support one of the more nd culturally pretentious of American photographic por- ornate atTraffic in Photographs trait establishments, Ball's Daguerrian Gallery of the West. Here then is a fragment of what was undoubtedly the first local an nouncement of the novel invention which was soon to blossom into the very embodiment of Culture: {ts perfection is unapproachable by buman band and its truth raises it above all language, painting or poetry It ts the first universal language addressing itself to all who possess vision, and in characters alike understood in the courts of cloliza tion and the hut of the savage, The pictorial language of Mes ico, the bieroglyphics of Fgypt are now superseded by reatity” [find it striking that this account glides from the initial tcum- peting of a triumph over “all language,” presumably including all previous European cultural achievements, to the celebration of a victorious encounter with “primitive” and archeologically remote pictographic conventions, rendering these already extinct lan- guages rather redundantly “obsolete.” This optimistic hymn to Progress conceals a fear of the past. For the unconscious that re- sides within this text, dead languages and cultures may well be pregnant with the threat of rebirth. Like zombies, they must be Killed again, and embalmed by a “more perfect union" of sign and referent, a union that delivers “reality” itself without the mediation of hand or tongue, This new mechanical language, by its very close- ness to nature, will speak in civilizing tones to previously unteach: able “savages.” Behind the rhetoric of technologically derived egal- itarlanism lurks a vision of the relentless imposition of a new pedagogical power. Consider also a related passage from one of the central ideo- logical documents of the early history of photography, the report ‘on the daguereeotype by the physicist and left-republican represen- tative Francois Arago addressed to his colleagues in the French Chamber of Deputies. This report was published along with the texts of related speeches by the chemist Gay-Lussac and the Inter- ior Minister Dachatel in the numerous editions in many Langu; ‘of Daguerre’s instruction manual. As is well known, Arago argued for the award of a state pension to Daguerre for his "work of ge- nius;” this purchase would then be offered “generously to the en- tire world.” Not without a certain amount of manocuvering (in- volving the covert shunting aside of photographic research by Hippolyte Bayard and the more overt down-playing of Nicéphore Nigpce's contribution to the Nigpce-Daguerre collaboration), ‘Arago established the originality of Daguerre’s invention.* Arago also emphasized the extraordinary efficiency of the invention — its capacity to accelerate the process of representation — and the demonstrable utility of the new medium for both art and science. ‘Thus the report's principal ideological service was to fuse the au- thority of the state with that of the individual author — the individ- uated subject of invention, But while genius and the parliamentary. monarchic state bureaucracy of Lowis-Phillipe are brought together within the larger ideological context of a unified technical and 6, See Ricnard Rucsil, Miror Image: The Influen Daguerrectype on American Society, Albuauergu 201 ofthe 1971 7. “The Daguerteoie." The Daily Chronicle (Cineinnat, Vol. No. 88, January 17, 1840, p. 2, quoted in Rudi p54 Soe Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, LJ. M. Daguerre The Mistory of the Diorama and the Dagusrrecype, Nes York, 1968 pp. 86,99.Photography. tans. Edward Epstoan, New York, pp. 25. The earliest English translaian of his adores ap poa’s i LM, Daguerre, An Historical and Dosenetve ‘Account of the Daguerrentype and the Diorama, Lenton, ‘a9 10. Arago, Report," pp. 234-236. 11. Ear Said, Orientalism, Now York, 1978. Traffic in Photographs cultural progressivism, the report also touches on France's colonial enterprises and specifically upon the archival chores of the "zeal ous and famous scholars and artists attached to the army of the Orient.” Here is the carliest written fantasy of a collision between photography and hieroglyphics, a fantasy that resurfaced six ‘months later in Ohio: While these pictures are exbibited to you, everyone will im ‘agine the extraordinary advantages iwbied could have been derived from so exact and rapid @ means of reproduction during the expedition to Feypt everybody wit! realize that bad ‘we had photography in 1798 we would possess today faithful Pictorial records of that which the learned world i forever deprived by the greed of the Arabs and the vandaltsn Of ¢@r tain travelers. To copy the miltions of bieroglyphics which cover even the exterior of the great monuments of Thebes, Memphis, Karnak, and otbers would require decades of time and legions of draughtsmen, By daguerreotype one person would suffice to accomplish this immense work successfully... These designs will excel the works of the most accomplished painters, in fidelity of detail and srue reproduction of atmosphere. Since ‘the invention follows the laws of geometry. will be posstble to reestablish with the atd of a small number of given factors the exact size of the bighest points of the most inaccessible In this rather marked example of what Edward Said has termed “Orientalist” discourse, a “Iearned” Occident colonizes an East that either always has lacked or has lost all memory of learning," A seemingly neutral, mathematical objectivism retrieves, measures and preserves the artifacts of an Orient that has “greedily” squan. dered its own heritage. In a sense, Arago’s argument here is overde- termined: France, a most civilized nation, a nation aware of its historical mission, must not fail to preserve and nurture its own inventions. In effect, Arago’s speech conflates photography-as end and photography-as-2-means. This should not be at all surpris: ing, given the powerful tendency of bourgeois thought to collapse all teleology into the sheer, ponderous immanence of technological development. Rational progress becomes a matter of the increas- ingly quantitative refinement of technical means; the only positive transformations are those that stem from orderly technical innova tions. Hence Arago’s emphasis on the conquest of vandalism, greed and ignorance through speed and the laws of geometry. In a very different historical context — that of the last crisis- ridden years of Weimar Germany — a text appeared that is reminis cent of both Arago’s refined promotion and the hyperbolic news- paper prophecy from Ohio, August Sander, that rigorously and comprehensively sociologistic portraitist of the German people, delivered a radio talk in 1931 entitled “Photography as a Universal Language." The talk, which ran fifth in a series by Sander, stresses that a liberal, enlightened, and even socially-critical pe: might be achieved by the proper use of photographie m Sander's emphasis is less on the pictorial ipated by 83Iraffic in Photographs Arago in 1839 than on a global mode of communication that would hurdle barriers of illiteracy and language difference. But at the same time, Sander echoes the scientistic notions of photographic truth that made their initial authoritative appearance in Arago’s report Today with photography we can communicate our thoughts, conceptions, and realities, 10 all the people on the earth; if we add the date of the year we have the power to fix the history of the world Even the most solated Bushman could understand a photograph of the heavens — whether it showed the sun or the ‘moon or the constellations. In biology, in Ube animal and plant world, the photograph as picture language can com ‘municate without the belp of sound. But the field in which photography bas so great « power of expression that language ‘can never approach tis physiognomy: Perhaps it is understandable that in his enthusiasm for photogra phic enlightenment Sander led his unseen radio audience to be: lieve that a Copernican cosmology and a mechanically rendered Albertian perspective might constitute transhistorical and transcul tural discourses: photography could deliver the heliocentric and dssance to any human viewer, perspectival truths of the R Further, Sander describes photography as the truth vehicle for an eclectic artay of disciplines: not only astronomy, but history, biology, zoology, botany, physiognomy (and clearly the list is not meant to be exhaustive). Two paragraphs later, his (ext seeks to name the source of the encyclopedic power to convey virtually all the world's knowledges: No language on earth speaks as comprebensively as photo: graphy, always providing that we follow the chemical and ‘optic and physical path to demonstrable truth, and under Stand physiognomy. Of course you have to bave decided whether you will serve culture or the marketplace: In opposing photogeaphie truth to commercial values, and in re: ‘garding photography as "a special discipline with special laws and its own special language," Sander is assuming an uncompromis ingly modernist stance. This position is not without its contradic: tions. Thus, on the one hand Sander claims that photography con- stitutes a “language” that is both autonomous and universal; on the other, photography is subsumed within the logical order of the natural sciences. The “laws” that are “special” to photography turn out to be those of chemistry and optics. From this subordinate position photography functions as the vehicle for a scientific ped: agogy. For Arago, photography is a means of aggressively acquiring the world's truth; for Sander, photography benignly disseminates these truths to a global audience. Although the emphasis in the first instance is on acquisition, and in the second on distribution, both projects are fundamentally rooted in a shared epistemology. This epistemology combines a faith in the universality of the natural sciences, and a belief in the transparency of representation, Figure 3: August Sander, United (Peasant Coupe from the Unugehied) 1931. Hom sories Menschen und Land chatten People and Lanviscapes) 12, August Sander, “Photography as @ Universal Lan. guage,” ans. Anne. Halley, ‘Massachusetts. Review. ot xix. No.4 Winter 1978. pp. 674.676, 13. tbid, p 675 14. th, p. 678.Traffic in Photographs For Sander, physiognomy was perhaps the highest of the human ‘aces, which are in turn merely extensions of natural-scientific ‘method. Physiognomic empiricism serv “sas the basis for what the novelist and physician Alfred Déblin, in his preface to Sander's Antlitz der Zeit described as a project methodologically analogous to medical science, thereby collapsing history and sociology into social anatomy You have in front of you a kind of cultural history, better, sociology of the last 30 years. How to write sociology without luriting, but presenting photographs instead, photographs of faces and not national costumes, this is what the photo: ‘grapber accomplished with bis eyes, bis mind, bis observa tions, bis knowledge and last but not least bis considerable photographic ability, Only through studying comparative ‘anatomy can we come to an understanding of nature and the bistory of the internal organs. In the same way this photo grapber has practiced comparative anatomy and therefore Found a scientific point of view beyond the conventional hotograpber: the echoes of nineteenth-century positivism and its Enlightenment antecedents are deafening here, as they ar in Sander’s own implicit hierarchy of knowledge. The grim master voice is that of Auguste Comte's systematic and profoundly influential effort to invent soci- ology (or “social physics.” as he initially labeled the new disci pline) on the model of the physical sciences, in his Cours de Phi sophie Positive of 1830-1842." Physiognomy predates and partially anticipates positivism. A 1S.AttedDebin “Abus Feces Porvaa and TheieReainy, MbeT of social scientific disciplines absorbed physiognomic | Itwosieon to August Sarena dor Zer" 11629) m method as a means of implementing positivist theory during the Germany The New Protgrahy, 1927:28,88 O8¥8 ME yinereenth century. This practice continued into the twentieth tee Londen 8a century and, despite certain decline in sctentific legitimacy, took 16, Auguste Com, Cours de Phiosophie Pastive 1890 on an especially charged aspect in the social environment of W 1842\1n Auguste Comte and Postviny The Eszortal Wit . Se ernie eae a ee eee tears Cenccrtines, ‘mar Germany. Sander shared the then still common belief — which 's Phy'siogno: Figure 4: August Sander, Landowner and Wile. Cologne/ roi, ¢ 1928, ‘duction i especialy valuable dated back at least as far as Johann Caspar Lavat mische Fragmente of 1775-1778 — that the body, and especially the face and head, bore the outward signs of ianer character. Lav. i ater himself had first suggested that this “original language of Na- ture, weitten on the face of Man” could be deciphered by a rigorous 17. Johann Caspar Lavater Essays on Physiognomy, trans. physiognomic science.” This “science” proceeded by means of an ent Hurtr London, 1782 Xo peach, Thi ie alytic isolation of the anatomic features of the head and face Boforderung der Menschenkennnns und Menschenicoe, —-—forehead, eyes, ears, nose, chin, and so on — and the assignment J epee anlar 1795-1778 of a significance to each. “Character” was judged through a con: catenation of these readings. Of course Sander never proffered 50 rigorous a mode of physiognomical interpretation for his photo: graphs, He never suggested that each fragment of facial anatomy be ' isolated through the kind of pictorial dissection sketched by vater and practiced by his myriad disciples, I suspect Sander wanted to envelop his project in the legitimating aura of science without violating the esthetic coherence and semantic ambiguity of the traditional portrait form. Despite his scientistic thetoric, his co nn‘raffle in Photographs by physiognomists of all stripes. Sander’s commitment was, in ef fect, to sociologically extended variant of formal portraiture. His scientism is revealed in the ensemble, in the attempt to delineate a social anatomy. More than anything else, physiognomy served as a telling metaphor for this project. “The historical trajectories of physiognomy, and of the related practices of phrenology and anthropometrics, are extremely com- plicated and are consistently interwoven with the history of photo graphic portraiture. And as was the case with photography, these disciplines gave rise to the sume contradictory but connected ratio- ales, These techniques for reading the body's signs seemed to promise both egalitarian and authoritarian results, At the one ex: treme, the more liberal apologetic promoted the cultivation of a common human understanding of the language of the body: all of humanity was to be both subject and object ofthis new egalitarian discourse. At the other extreme — and this was certainly the domi nant tendency in actual social practice — a specialized way of knowledge was opening harnessed to the new strategies of social channeling and control that characterized the mental asylum, the penitentiary, and eventually the factory employment office, Unlike the egalitarian mode, these latter projects drew an unmistakable line herween the professional reader of the body's signs — the psychiatrist, physiologist, criminologist, oF industrial psychologist ul the “diseased,” “deviant,” or "biologically inferior” object of cure, reform, or discipline ‘August Sander stood to the liberal side of positivism in his faith in a universal pedagogy. Yet like positivists in general, he was insen- sitive to the epistemological differences between peoples and cule tures, Difference would seem to exist only on the surface; all peo piles share the same modes of perception and cognition, as well as the same natural bodily codes of expression. For nineteenth cen- tury positivism, anthropological difference became quantitative rather than qualitative. This reduction opened the door to one of the principle justifications of social Darwinism. Inferiority could presumably be measured and located on a continuous calibrated scale, Armed with calipers, sealpel, and camera, Scientists sought t0 prove the absence of a governing intellect in criminals, the insane, women, workers, and nonwhite people." Here again, one lineage stretches back beyond positivism and social Darwinism to the be- nign figure of Lavater who proclaimed both the “universality of physiognomic discernments” and defined a “human nature” fan- damentally constituted by a variable mixture of “animal, moral, and intellectual life" ‘Bur Sander, in contrast to his nineteenth-century predecessors, refused to link his belief in physiognomic science to biological determinism. He organized his portraiture in terms of a social, rather than a racial, typology. As Anne Halley has noted in a percep. tive essay on the photographer, herein lay the most immediate dif- ference hetween Sander's physiognomic project and that of Nazi 18. | am preparing an ossay which de between paysiognemy ane instrumental Greater deta. A great deal ofthis work revolves around ‘Stuy ofthe two prinepal schools of ate nineteenth European eriminology, the Positvst Scheel of forensic psychiatrist Cesare Lombyoso and the Statistical ‘School of the French police olieal Alphonse Berton. Lombroso advanced the profouna racist rang lived no tion of an atavise criminal type, while Benen, applying the social staistics developed by the Belgian siavstician ‘Adolpie Qutelet in the 1820s and 1830s, sought 0 abso Iunolyieny te criminal indivisuaity” Berton met ‘od of police lenticaton, which lined a ser of anthra- pometric measurements toa photographic ponrae-parlé or speaking likeness,” was thelist Scientilie™ system of po lice inteligonce. Perhaps the most strking example ofthe rmathematicism inherent in these searches forse absolute,objective uth ofthe incarcerated body i found, not inthe Erminalogieal erature of She nineteenth century. but in the elated fot of payin meine T would like to oto one example to emphasize the na ture ofthis thinking Hugh Weses Diamond, a minor English Doves and founding member of the gentoo! Phot fraphe Society, attempted #o use photographic poral of faitont in the Surrey County Women's Asyium for emp esearch therapy, and surveillance of te imate pept ion. Diamond read a paper on his work {0 the Royal Seciety in 1856: "The pnotographer, on the other hand, fends in many eases no a rom ey language of his but prefers rather a listen, wth the pictutes before him 0 the lent but teling language of nature. the picture speaks for ell wit the most marked pression and int {ates the exact point wich has been reacmeain the scale of Cnhappiness between the frst sensation and its utmost height” (aie mine. Hugh W. Diamond, "On the Apo ‘pon of Photography tothe Physiognemic and Mental Phe nomena of Insanity,” in The Face af Madness: Hugi W Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatrie Photography. 08 Sender. Gian, Secaucus, 1977, p19) Thave found the work of Michel Foucault pertiulely valuable in considering these issues, especially Ns Dis! pine and Punish, The Birt of te Prison. Now York, 1877 Ky interest in this area bogan in corwersations with Marthe Rosle: her vdeo “opera” Vital Staustes ofa Citizen Simy Obtainad [1576) is an exemplary study of the power of measurement scence over the body, with a feminist inl tion that absent nthe work of Foseaut 18. Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy p. 13. 20, Anne Halley, “August Sander." Massachusetts Review. Vol XIX No.4, Winter 1878, pp. 663-673, See also Robert Kamer, “Histoneal Commentary,” In August Sander Pho tographs of an Epoch, Priladeipha, 1980, pp. 11-38 or 8 ‘scusson of Sanders relation to physiognomictradons. 21, Faselst ideology is overtly metaphysical in characte, Sepending in large measure on cults of racial ang national Superonty and on the ostentatious cisplay of charismatic Suthorty. Neverthales the actual functioning ofthe fascist Corporate sate damandsthe sub rosa exercise ofa bureau ate ravonalsm that is profoundly rooted in postivst ne tions of the commending role of sence and of technical tite, Naz ideologues ft the need, n fac, o scienically legitimate the Fubver eu. Ons text in particular is relevant to our discussion of Sander and physiognomy. Aled Rich ters Unser Furr im Licht dor Rassontiage und Charater ‘loge Line, 1983, sought ta demonstrate the racia iat ftyand innate poltial genus of Ado iter andthe host of tap party effials by means of handsemaly-tt formal por tra tat were accompanied by fatering physiognomical {inalyses, This research projctcur-souvenit album pro ‘ides unintended evidence thatthe seemingly charismatic futhorty ofthe fags leader nas the quay of an appari on, an Oz-ke aspect that requires amplification through the media and legtimation through an appeal to the larger abstract authority of Science, In this ight Hier shines a the embodiment of a racial princi. nts assault on parla~ mentary plural, fascist government poreays elf not nly as @ means of national salvation, but as the ganic eipression of © nonwatianal, bilgicaly 678, 28, Welter Benjamin (in “A Short History of Photography’ ‘Traffic in Photographs race “theorists” like Hans P. K. Gunther who deployed physiog. nomic readings of photographic portraits to establish both the bio- logical superiority of the Nordic “race” and the categorical other: ness of the Jews.® The very universalism of Sander’s argument for photographic and physiognomic truth may well have been an indi ect and somewhat naive attempt to respond to the racial particular: ism of the Nazis, which "scientifically" legitimated genocide and imperialism, The conflict between Sander and National Socialist Rassenthe- orie, which culminated in the Nazi's destruction of the plates for Antlitz der Zeit in 1934, is well remembered and celebrated by liberal historians of photography. One is tempted to emphasize a contrast between Sander’s “good” physiognomic science and the “bad” physiognomic science of Gtinther and his ik, without chat enging the positivist underpinnings of both projects. That is, what is less apparent is that Sander, in his “scientific” liberalism, shared aspects of the same general positivist outlook that was incorpo- rated into the fascist project of domination. But in this, Sander was little different from other social democrats of his time. The larger questions which loom here concern the continuities between fas: ad bureaucratic socialist cist, liberal capitalist, social democratic governments as modes of administration which subject social life to the authority of an institutionalized scientific expertise. The politics of social democracy, to which Sander subscribed, demand that government be legitimated on the basis of formal representation, Despite the sense of impending collapse, of crisis- evel unemployment and imminent world war conveyed by Sander in his radio speech of 1931, he st ly inflected faith in the representativeness of bourgeois parliamentary governme tains a curio The bistorical image will become even clearer if we join (0. gether pictures typical of the many different groups Wat make ‘up buman sociely For instance, we might consider a nation’s parliament, If we began with the Right Wing and moved ‘across the individual types to the farthest Left, we would at ready bave a partial pbysiognomic image of the nation.” Just as a picture stands for its referent, so parliament stands fo: nation. In effect, Sander regards parliament as a picture in itself, a synecdochic sample of the national whole. This contila of pictorial and political repres ion of the mythologi sntation may well be fundamental to the public discourse of liberalism. Sander, unlike Bertolt Brecht or the lef-wing photomontagist John Heartfield, believed that political relations were evident on the surface of things” Political revelation was a matter of careful sampling for Sander, his project shares the logic of the opinion poll. In th Sander stands in the mainstream of liberal thinking on the nature of journalism and social documentation; he shares both the episte mology and the politics that accompany bourgeois realism, The deceptively clear waters of this mainstream flow from the conflu ence of two deep ideological currents, One current defends sei e7 (Qe“affie in Photographs ence as the privileged representation of the real, as the ultimate source of social truth. The other current defends parliamentary politics as the representation of a pluralistic popular desire, as the ultimate source of social good, Despite Sander’s tendency to collapse politics into a physiog: nomic typology, he never loses sight of the political arena as one of conflict and struggle. And yet, viewed as a whole, Sander’s com pendium of portraits from the Weimar period and before possess a haunting — and ideologically limiting — synchronicity for the con- temporary viewer. One witnesses a kind of false stasis, the appear: ance of a tense structural equilibrium of social forces. Today, San- der's project suggests a neatly arranged chessboard that was about to be dashed to the floor by brown-shirted thugs. But despite San- der's and Déblin’s claims to the contrary, this project was not then and is not now an adequate reading of German social history, But what of an even more ambitious photographic project, one which managed not only to freeze social life, but also to render it invisible? I am thinking here of that celebrated event in American postwar culture, the exhibition The Family of Man. Almost thirty years after Sander’s radio talk, the photographer Edward Steichen, who was director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, voiced similarly catholic sentiments in an article pub- lished in Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Despite the erudite forum, the argument is simplistic, much more so than anything Sander ever claimed: Long before the birth of a word language the caveman communicated by visual images. The invention of photo- graphy gave visual communication tts most simple, direct, tiniversal language: Steichen went on to tout the success of his Museum of Modern Art exhibition, The Family of Man, which by 1960 had been seen by ‘some seven million people in the twenty-eight countries.” He continued, introducing a crude tautological psychologism into view of photographic discourse: ‘The audiences not only understand this visual presenta tion, they also participate in tt, and identify themselves with the images, as f in corroboration of the words of a Japanese ‘poet, ‘when you look into a mirror, you do not see your reflec tion, your reflection sees you." Steichen, in this moment of fondness for Zen wisdom, understand- ably neglected to mention that the Japanese recipients of the exhi bition insisted on the inclusion of a large photographic mural de- picting the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus resisting the ahistoricity of the photo essay's argument The Family of Man, first exhibited in 1955, may well be the epitome of American Cold War liberalism, with Steichen playing cultural attaché to Adlai Stevenson, the would-be good cop of US. foreign policy, promoting a benign view of an American world [9311 trans. Stanley Michel, Sereon, Vol. 13, Spring 1872, p 24) quotes avery explicit and often cited statment by Brecht in ths regard “For, says Brecht, the station is ‘ompiicated by te fact that loss than at any time does & simple repraduction of reafey tel us anything about realty. ‘A phetograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost pothing about these Institutions. Reality proper hae sipped imo the functional The vecation of human relationships, the factory, los Say, no longer reveals these relationships. Teretore someting has actually tobe constructed, some: thing arti something eet up ‘One could argue that even the assemblage of portraits pursued by Sander merely reproduces the ogc assigned Imavicual places, and thus of retcation 24, Edvard Steichen, "On Photograpty.” Daedalus, Vo. 42, fp. 136-137, in Nathan Lyons, ed, Photographers on Ph tography, Englewood Gills, 1966, . 107, 25, bi, 107,Traffic in Photographs order stabilized by the rule of international law. The Family of Man universalizes the hourgeois nuclear family, suggesting a globalized, utopian family album, a family romance imposed on every corner of the earth, The family serves as a metaphor also for a system of international discipline and harmony. In the foreign showings of the exhibition, arranged by the United States Information Agency \ and co-sponsoring corporations like Coca-Cola, the discourse was explicitly that of American multin ional capital and government — the new global management team — cloaked in the familiar and musty garb of patriarchy. Nelson Rockefeller, who had served as president of the MoMA Board of Trustees between 1946 and 1953, delivered a preview address that is revealing in terms of its own father-fixation. Rockefeller began his remarks in an appropriately internation. ' alist vein, suggesting that the exhibition created “a sense of kinship with all mankind.” He went on: There is a second message to be read from this profession of | Fidward Sleichen's faith. It demonstrates that the essential unity of buman experience, attitude and emotion are per fectly communicable through the medium of pictures. The ‘Solicitous eye of the Bantu futher, resting upon the son who earning to throw bis primitive spear in search of food, is the 26. Nelson Rockoelle, “Preview Address: The Family of eye of every father, whetber in Montreal, Paris, or in Tokyo. | Mon" US: Camaro 1956, ed, Tom Maloney, New York 1966, , 18, lam grateful to Alex Sweetman forcaling my For Rockefeller, social life begins with fathers teaching sons to attention to ths article survive in a Hobbesian world: taquated with this primary relationship. \ ‘close textual reading of Tbe Family of Man would ind that the exhibition moves from the celebration of patriarchal at thority — which finds ts highest embodiment in the United Nations — to the final construction of an imaginary utopia that fesembles nothing so much as a protracted state of infantile, pre } Gedipal lise The best-selling book version of the exhibition ends wth the following sequence. First, there appears an aay of por: trait of elderly couples, mostly peasants or farmers from Sicily, Ca | ada, China, Holland, and the United States, The glariag exception in 1 Sandee portal ofa wealthy German landowner be metaphorically and his wife. Each picture is captioned with the repeated line from Ovid, “We two form a multitude.” From these presumably archetyp- al parent figures we turn the page to finda large photograph of the ! United Nations General Assembly, accompanied by the opening phrases of the U.N. Charter. The next page offers a woman's lower body, bedecked in flowers and standing in water. ‘The following five t pages contain smaller photographs of children at play throughout the world, ending with W. Eugene Smith's famous photograph of his som and daughter walking from darkness into light in a garden, The final photograph in the book is quite literally a depiction of the ic state, a picture by Cedric Wright of churning surf y ‘A ease could also be made for viewing The Family of Man as a more of less unintentional popularization of the then-dominant 89 EE |Traffic tn Photographs school of American sociology, Talcott Parsons’ structural function alism. Parsons’ writings on the family celebrate the modern nuclear family as the most advanced and efficient of familial forms, prine pally because the nuclear family establishes a clearcut division of male and female roles. The male function, in this view, is primarily strumental” and oriented toward achievement in the public sphere. The female function is primarily “expressive” and re stricted to the domestic sphere. Although The Family of Man exhib. its a great deal of nostalgia for the extended family engaged in self-sufficient agrarian production, the overall flow of the exhibi tion's loosely knit narrative traces @ generalized family biography that adheres to the nuclear model.” ‘The familialism of The Family of Man functions both meta. Phorically and in a quite specific, literal fashion as well. For au diences in the advanced capitalist countries, and particularly in the United States, the celebration of the familial sphere as the exclusive arena of all desire and pleasure served to legitimate a family-based consumerism. If nothing else, The Family of Man was a massive promotion for family photography, as well as a celebration of the Power of the mass media to represent the whole world in familiar and intimate forms." The Family of Man, originating at the Museum of Modern Art, but utilizing a mode of architecturally monumentalized photo: essayistic showmanship, occupies a problematic but ideologically convenient middle position between the conventions of high mod- ernism and those of mass culture. The modernist category of the solitary author was preserved, but at the level of editorship. The ‘exhibition simultancously suggested a family album, a juried show for photo hobbyists, an apotheosis of Life Magazine, and the mag: num opus in Steichen’s illustrious career. A lot more could be said about The Family of Man, particularly about its relation to the domestic sexual politics of the Cold War and about its exemplary relation to the changing conventions of advertising and mass-circulation picture magazines in the same pe riod. This will have to wait, My main point here is that The Family of Man, more than any other single photographic project, w massive and ostentatious bureaucratic attempt to universalize pho tographic discourse Five hundred and three pictures taken by in 68 countries were chosen from 2 million solicited submissions ized by a single, illustrious editorial authority into a show that was seen by 9 million citizens in 69 countries in 85 separate exhibitions, and into a book that sold at least 4 million copies by 1978 — or so go the statistics that pervade all accounts of the exhibition, The exhibition claims to fuse universal subject'a photographers 1d uni versal object ina single moment of visual truth and visual pleasure, a single moment of blissful identity. But this dream rings hollow, especially when we come across the following oxymoronic con struction in Carl Sandburg’s prologue to the book version of the 27. See Talat Parsons at al, Family. Socialization and In teraction Process, New York, 1955, and the eique pro vided in Mark Poster Crticat Theary of the Family, New York, 1978, pp, 76:84. Barbara Enrenrcich and Deir Eng. Ish \For Her Own Good. 150 Yoars of Experts vies to Women, New York, 1978) ae excaint onthe issue off mill ideology inthe postwar period 28, Russo Lynes presents evidence that Steichen’s ap ointment tothe postion of Director of the MoMA Depart Imentof Photography in 1847 mvelvedan unsuccesstl plan {o bring direct funding from photographic corporations into the musoum Although unstrprsing tad, nan era o dh rect corporate funding, ths was a novel mae in the Lote 1840s. fussel Lynes, Good Old Modern, Now York, 1973, po. 259.280)r ee Traffic in Photographs rom The Fanily of Man, The Museum of Medrn At, Neve ! Fue: rslaton Tht copy Ee Sr York 1955. nsallton byTraffic in Photographs HERE'S” A GUIDE TO THE FAMILY OF pen Steichon's photographic tribute to Tina te Wr bode aad eOieD auch ae “Hope that it vequires new approaches to organization and display. The architect's drawing above shows hiow sonte of the problems were solves. Groups of related pic “times are indicated by number in approsinyately the oiler (hey are seen by-a visitor | walking thiough the exhibitions Lentratce arch, 2 lovers, 3 childbirth, 4 mothers and childven, § children plasing, distused chiliien, 7 fathers and sons, @ Photograph displayed on whe for, 9 “amily of man” central theme picuires, 10 agrieuliure, 11 labor, 12 household and wrfice work, 13 eating. 14 follssinging. 18 dancing, 16 music, 17 drinking, 18 playing, 19 ring-around-the-vosy stand, 20 leatin- ing: thinking, and teaching, 21 hubian relations, 22 death, 23 loneliness, 24 griet, ily, 25 dreamers, 26 religion, 27 hard tines and famine, 28 wan's inhumabity finan, 29 rebels. 30 youth, 31 justice, 32 publie debate, 33 faces of war, 34 dead soldier, 35 illuminated transparency of W-bomb explosion, 36 UN, and 37 children. Figure 6: Florplan and synopsis of The Fanily of Man. The Museum of Modern at, New York, 1985, nstalation by Paul Rudolph. Annotated dgrar publsed in Popular Photograpty, May 1985, 9229, Carl Sandourg, “Prologue,” The Family of Man, Now ‘ork, 1958, 20, Lyne, Good Ot Modern 233 231. Eva Cockeroft, "Abstract Expressionism asa Weapon of the Cold Wer” Ariorum, Vol. Xi, No. 10, June 1873, fp. 39-41, Seo algo Max Keo “American Painting During the Cold War” Artforum, VoL XI, No.8, ay 1973, pp. 43 54; Willam Hauptman, "The Suppression of Artin the Mecactny Decade,” Artoru, vol. Xl No.2, October 1873, 2p. 8-52. Of general interest is Christopher Lasch’s “The Cutura Cold War: Short History ofthe Congress for Cut {ural Freedom," in fowards a New Past: Dissenting Essays In American History 08, Barton Bernstein, New York, 1969, pp. 322-959, is interesting, # 9 tery Felovant to my present argument. 1 nota that Harty Lunn. curently #o faded a5 the biggest photographie dealer inthe US. was a Brineipal agont in te CIA's inition of the National Stu tone Asscesation nthe 1950s and 60s, according to Sol Stern, "NSA and the CIA, A Short Account of International Student Poles ana the Cold War,” Ramparts, Vol. 5, NO, Mares 1987, p33, ‘Traffic in Photographs exhibition: Sandburg describes The Family of Man asa “multiplica- tion table of living breathing human faces." Suddenly, arithmetic and humanism collide, forced by poetic license into an absurd harmony. Here, yet again, are the twin ghosts that haunt the prac tice of photography: the voice of a reifying technocratic objectiv: ism and the redemptive voice of a liberal subjectivism. The statis: tics that seek to legitimate the exhibition, to demonsteate its value, begin to carry a deeper sense: the truth being promoted here is one of enumeration. This is an estheticized job of global accounting, & careful Cold War effort to bring about the ideological alignment of the neo-colonial peripheries with the imperial center. American culture of both elite and mass varieties way being promoted as more universal than that of the Soviet Union, A brief note on the cultural polities of the Cold War might be valuable here. Nelson Rockefeller, who welcomed The Family of Man with the characteristic exuberance noted above, was the principle architect of MoMA's International Circulating Exhibi tions Program, which received a five year grant from the Rocke feller Brothers’ Fund beginning in 1952. Under the directorship of Porter MacCeay, this program exhibited American vanguard art abroad, and, in the words of Russell Lynes, “let it be known espe: cially in Europe that America was not the cultural backwater that the Russians during that tense period called ‘the cold war’ were trying to demonsteate that it was." Eva Cockcroft has shown con: vincingly that this non-governmental sponsorship was closely allied with CIA efforts to promote American high culture abroad while circumventing the MacCarthyist probings of right-wing Congr men who, for example, sew Abstract Expressionism as a manifesta tion of the international communist conspiracy.’ But since the formal chetoric of The Family of Man was that of photo-journalistic realism, no antagonisms of this sort developed; and although number of the photographers who contributed pictures to the ex hibition were of had been affiliated with left parties or causes, Steichen himself, the grand author of this massive photo essay, was above suspicion. Thus Family of Man was directly sponsored by the USIA, and openly embraced by the co-sponsoring corporations as a valuable marketing and public relations tool. The exhibition was intended to have an immense popular appeal, and was more extensively circulated than any other MeMA production. Even medium-sized cities in the US., Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, and the Third World received the show. For example, in India alone the exhibition turned up in Bombay, Agra, New Delhi, Ahmedabad, Calcutta, Madras, and Trivandrum, In South Africa The Family of Man was shown in Johannesburg, Capetown, Durban, Pretoria, Windhoek (Southwest Africa), Port Elizabeth, and Uitenboge. In domestic showings in New York State alone, the original MoMA exhibit was followed by appearances in Utica, Corning, Rochester, and Binghamton, Shades of American television, but with higher 9 , A ——————————EEE‘raffle in Photographs From my reading of the records of foreign showings of The Family of Man, it seems cleat that the exhibition tended to appear in political “hot spots” throughout the Third World, I quote froma United States Information Agency memo concerning the Djakarta showing in 1962 The exbibtion proved to have wide appeal... tn spite of the fact that. the pertod colnclded witb circus sponsored 2p the Soviet Union, complete witha performing Detr The exhibit tvas opened ‘with a reception to which members of the most important target groups in Djakarta there invited In a more lyrical vein, Steichen recalled the Guate! showing in his autobiography, A Life in Photography: City A notable experience was reported in Guatemala. On the {final day of the exbibition, a Sunday. several thousand Indi ‘ans from the bills of Guatemala came on foot or muleback 10 see it, An American vistior said tt was like a religious expe. rience 10 see these barefoot country people who could not read or write walk silently through the exbibition gravely studying each picture with rapt attention. ‘Regardless of the place, the response was always the same the people in the audience looked at the pictures and the ‘people in the pictures looked back at them. They’ recognized each other.” At the risk of boring some readers with more statistics, allow me to recall that in 1954, only fourteen months earlier, the United States directly supported a coup in Guatemala, overthrowing the demo- cratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, who had received 72 percent of the popular vote in the 1950 elections. American pilots Mew bombing missions during the coup. When Arbenz took office, 98 percent of the land in Guatemala was owned by 142 people, with corporations counted as individuals, Arbenz nationalized 200,000 acres of unused United Fruit Company land, ageceing to pay for the land with 25 year bonds, rather than engaging in out tight expropriation. In establishing the terms of payment, the Gua- temalan government accepted the United Fruit valuation of the land a¢ $600,000, which had been claimed for tax purposes. Sud: denly United Fruit claimed that the disputed land was worth $16 million, and approached the US. State Department for assis: tance. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, who was both a United Fruit stockholder and a former legal counsel to the firm, touted the successful invasion and coup as a"“new and glorious chapter in the already great tradition of the American States.” Following the coup the US-sponsored dictatorship of Colonel Castillo Aemas dismantled agrarian reform and disenfranchised the 70 percent of the population that could, in Steichen’s words, “neither read nor write.” In this context, “visual literacy” takes on a grim meaning, Finally, my last exhibit concerning this Cold Wae extravaganza: a corporate commentary on the showing of The Family of Man in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1958 attempted to link the universal: ism of the exhibition to the global authority of the commodity. 94 32, United States information Agency Memo, subject “Dia Karta showing of Family af Man," Feb. 5, 1962. A copy of this mama is nthe Tos ofthe International Counc Othion of Monta, 38. Edward Steichen, A Lite in Photography. New York, 1962, m3. 34. Department of Stat White Paper Intervention of lnter- tional Communism in Guatemala. 1954, p33, quoted David Horowite, Free Word Calogsus, New York, 1968, p. 160. The summary of events in Guatemala hor is tke laxgely from Fel Greene, The Enemy. New York, 1971 pp. 196-198, with some referances to Horowitz, pp. 160-181,