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Family of Woman
"The Family of Woman" comes from thousands of extraordinary photographs by 180 of the world's photographers. It shows the unique yet universal experiences of contemporary women in dozens of countries around the globe in their progress from infancy to old age. It has been created to join "The Family of Man" and "The Family of Children".
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1979
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 25, 2014
Although the edition I bought today at a school fate has a different cover, it has the same photograph on it, if smaller – and this photograph is so good it is used three times in the book – to start and end the book itself and on the cover, variously cropped each time.
The Family of Man is perhaps the most important photographic exhibition of all time. It was basically US propaganda at the beginning of the Cold War (well, 1955) – propaganda that one might be expected to walk though singing ‘It’s a Small World After All’. Yes, I know, sorry – that song will ear-worm you all day now.
Anyway, I spotted this book and decided to take it home. I was very keen to see what would make it into this collection and what it might say about sexism, and stuff like that. It was printed in 1979 – so, within living memory for me, anyway. But as I was looking through it, and being a bit of a structuralist and a tad obsessed with content analysis, I’m going to start by giving you some statistics that will help make sense of these photographs. There are 288 pictures in the book. 144 (yep, exactly half) are from the USA. This is interesting because the book sets itself up to show ‘unique yet universal experiences’. The photographs are interspersed with quotations from famous authors – mostly poets. Of these quotes 27 are by male authors and only 18 are by women. Imagine a book on men that had more quotes from women than men in it. Over ten percent (30 images) are of naked women.
Now, two of the images of naked women really stopped me. They are of pre-pubescent girls - one a full frontal image of perhaps a ten year old. I’ve been thinking lately about how much our views of such things have changed so fundamentally over such a very short time. There is a Rolling Stones song called Stray Cat Blues, which, the live version off Get Your Ya-yas Out, has someone talking about having sex with a girl who is thirteen years old - but it ain't no hanging matter, it ain't no capital crime... Imagine someone putting out a song on that theme today. And the young girl in the photograph made me think of the Bill Henson case – in which Henson was charged with child pornography offences. There is a quick video on all this from a news item on the affair here: http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days... Anyway, to have our Prime Minister at the time get so upset about an artist taking photographs of prepubescent girls while in this book there are two photographs of the same thing really does show that the world has changed an awful lot since 1979. From what I've seen of the Hanson images, the ones here are much more 'in your face'.
There is lots of love and marriage and childbirth – no lesbians, of course, they obviously don’t belong in the ‘family of woman’. I also thought it was interesting that there were no cross-dressing men – nothing at all to challenge the simple ‘either/or’-ness of the gender divide. There is a bizarre photograph of a women in an office with a man’s foot on the table and the foot is closer to the camera and so looks the same size as the woman’s head. There is another disturbing image with a young black couple hugging and being looked at by passing white people: a young white boy and a white soldier with only one leg, walking with crutches. It turns what would otherwise be a nice, romantic image into a grotesque one. There are images of strippers and images of what looks like rape scenes.
Some of the images, however, are very beautiful – there are some nice ones of women playing sport and in churches and getting married. But I think too many of the images throughout appeared staged. This meant that too many of the women became objects – objects that had been arranged and positioned so as to be best displayed to be appreciated by the male gaze. I thought this directly undermined what probably ought to have been the main idea of the book – that is, to portray women in ways somewhat different from how they are portrayed daily in the media.
Despite how few men are in this book, this book is very much focused on men. A few times the limited text literally says this. For instance, “Is there anywhere a man who will not punish us for our beauty?” “I never perform the marriage ceremony without a renewed sense of the iniquity of a system by which man and wife are one, and that one is the husband.” “There is no torture that a woman would not endure to enhance her beauty.”
There were remarkably few images of women working – and most of these involved housework – with two quotes about how housework is women’s work and a way to judge and measure them. The women portrayed are mostly 'good' women, women who know their place.
This is, of course, an historical document now – but as such it can’t help but make you wonder how would we go about illustrating The Family of Woman today. The sheer weight of numbers of images of women naked, hugging men, dressed to impress men, cooking for men, having babies, getting married, lying in bed post-coital or old and preparing for sleep – defines the roles most open for women in our society. There are only two images in this where women clearly have more power than the men in the image – perhaps that is at least part of the problem here.
The Family of Man is perhaps the most important photographic exhibition of all time. It was basically US propaganda at the beginning of the Cold War (well, 1955) – propaganda that one might be expected to walk though singing ‘It’s a Small World After All’. Yes, I know, sorry – that song will ear-worm you all day now.
Anyway, I spotted this book and decided to take it home. I was very keen to see what would make it into this collection and what it might say about sexism, and stuff like that. It was printed in 1979 – so, within living memory for me, anyway. But as I was looking through it, and being a bit of a structuralist and a tad obsessed with content analysis, I’m going to start by giving you some statistics that will help make sense of these photographs. There are 288 pictures in the book. 144 (yep, exactly half) are from the USA. This is interesting because the book sets itself up to show ‘unique yet universal experiences’. The photographs are interspersed with quotations from famous authors – mostly poets. Of these quotes 27 are by male authors and only 18 are by women. Imagine a book on men that had more quotes from women than men in it. Over ten percent (30 images) are of naked women.
Now, two of the images of naked women really stopped me. They are of pre-pubescent girls - one a full frontal image of perhaps a ten year old. I’ve been thinking lately about how much our views of such things have changed so fundamentally over such a very short time. There is a Rolling Stones song called Stray Cat Blues, which, the live version off Get Your Ya-yas Out, has someone talking about having sex with a girl who is thirteen years old - but it ain't no hanging matter, it ain't no capital crime... Imagine someone putting out a song on that theme today. And the young girl in the photograph made me think of the Bill Henson case – in which Henson was charged with child pornography offences. There is a quick video on all this from a news item on the affair here: http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days... Anyway, to have our Prime Minister at the time get so upset about an artist taking photographs of prepubescent girls while in this book there are two photographs of the same thing really does show that the world has changed an awful lot since 1979. From what I've seen of the Hanson images, the ones here are much more 'in your face'.
There is lots of love and marriage and childbirth – no lesbians, of course, they obviously don’t belong in the ‘family of woman’. I also thought it was interesting that there were no cross-dressing men – nothing at all to challenge the simple ‘either/or’-ness of the gender divide. There is a bizarre photograph of a women in an office with a man’s foot on the table and the foot is closer to the camera and so looks the same size as the woman’s head. There is another disturbing image with a young black couple hugging and being looked at by passing white people: a young white boy and a white soldier with only one leg, walking with crutches. It turns what would otherwise be a nice, romantic image into a grotesque one. There are images of strippers and images of what looks like rape scenes.
Some of the images, however, are very beautiful – there are some nice ones of women playing sport and in churches and getting married. But I think too many of the images throughout appeared staged. This meant that too many of the women became objects – objects that had been arranged and positioned so as to be best displayed to be appreciated by the male gaze. I thought this directly undermined what probably ought to have been the main idea of the book – that is, to portray women in ways somewhat different from how they are portrayed daily in the media.
Despite how few men are in this book, this book is very much focused on men. A few times the limited text literally says this. For instance, “Is there anywhere a man who will not punish us for our beauty?” “I never perform the marriage ceremony without a renewed sense of the iniquity of a system by which man and wife are one, and that one is the husband.” “There is no torture that a woman would not endure to enhance her beauty.”
There were remarkably few images of women working – and most of these involved housework – with two quotes about how housework is women’s work and a way to judge and measure them. The women portrayed are mostly 'good' women, women who know their place.
This is, of course, an historical document now – but as such it can’t help but make you wonder how would we go about illustrating The Family of Woman today. The sheer weight of numbers of images of women naked, hugging men, dressed to impress men, cooking for men, having babies, getting married, lying in bed post-coital or old and preparing for sleep – defines the roles most open for women in our society. There are only two images in this where women clearly have more power than the men in the image – perhaps that is at least part of the problem here.
December 9, 2019
Beautiful photographs.
August 29, 2023
Mooi fotoboek met sterke foto's, vergezeld met (soms iets minder sterke) quotes. Geeft een interessant tijdsbeeld weer (publicatiejaar 1979) van het leven van vrouwen over de hele wereld.
Want to Read
June 2, 20249
August 13, 2025
THIS BOOK HAS PHOTOS OF ADOLESCENT GIRLS POSED NUDE LIKE MODELS. IF YOU FIND A COPY SOMEWHERE, DESTROY IT. IT IS CHILD PORN. I don’t know how the fuck it is not illegal.
February 21, 2026
A truly remarkable collection!
January 21, 2013
A truly remarkable collection!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews