TRAVELS OF A TRUNCATED GLOBALIZATION
Espacio El Dorado, in Bogotá, inaugurated its first exhibition of the year: Un supuesto fotográfico: The family of man en Bogotá (A Photographic Assumption: The Family of Man in Bogotá). Organized by Editorialesréplica, the show is part of one of the most important photography exhibitions of the 20th century, presented for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as a declaration of global solidarity in the aftermath of World War II.
The organizer of the first edition of this exhibition, Edward Steichen, included 503 photographs taken in 68 countries that he distributed in a geometric modular system designed by the architect Paul Rudolph. The exhibition had the objective of offering a human vision of people regardless of their culture, location, race, sex or age, to establish ties between the peoples confronted by the war a few years ago.
At the end of the exhibition, the USA CIA organized a global itinerancy of the exhibition that was displayed on all continents in four copies identical to the original. In 1957, after its exhibition in Cuba and then in Venezuela, the fourth copy arrived in Colombia, but the plans for its exhibition at the IV International Exhibition of Bogotá were truncated by the National Strike that led to the fall of the dictator Gustavo Rojas Pinilla and the subsequent annulment of several projects and events sponsored by the State.
“Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, The Family of Man was one of the main assets of the CIA. to camouflage the interventionist policy of the US government and prevent the expansion of the communist bloc.” explains José Ruiz, from Editorialesréplica. “Steichen, not imagining that his project for global integration would be used as a diplomatic screen to cover acts of repression, served as a useful fool of the information agency whose main objective was to win supporters for the political and social systems in the United States.
Un supuesto fotográfico: The family of man en Bogotá offers an alternative exhibition to the original one, including museographic elements of Rudolph's proposal with images (mostly) of a country portrayed over the course of three decades by Colombian photographers who witnessed the development and the events of a territory and of the cultures and people who transited in it.
Photographers: Guillermo Angulo, Fran Antman, Jaime Ardila, Henri Maurice Berni, Anthony Boccaccio, Peter Bock-Schroder, Carlos Caicedo, Helder Camora, Fernando Cano, Francisco Carranza, Efraín Cárdenas, Martin Chambi, Alfredo Correa, Jack Delano, Hernán Díaz, Efraín García, Abdú Eljaiek, Orlando Fals Borda, Georges Friedemann, Paolo Gasparini, Rob Gerstmann, Nepomuceno Gómez, Álvaro González, Ernesto Guhl, Eugene Harris, Girón Henríquez, José María Henríquez, Manuel H., Lewis Hine, Olga Lucía Jordán, Erwin Kraus, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Leopoldo III of Belgium, Lezama, Nereo López, Luis Alberto Lunga, Camilo Lleras, Leo Matiz, Julia Elvira Mejía, Jorge Mario Múnera, Viki Ospina, Jorge Obando, Luis B. Ramos, Carlos Rivodó, Miguel Antonio Rodríguez, León Ruiz, Osvaldo Salas, Mady Samper, Sánchez, Arnaldo Santos, Fernando Scianna, Fabio Serrano, Kurt Severin, Ben Shahn, Felix Tisnés, Ricardo Tisnés, Sergio Trujillo, Francisco Urbin and Ray Witlin
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