Friendship Family Love & Laughter

Előszó

Twelve years ago I stumbled across a copy of The Family of Man at the MoMA bookstore in New York. It was the book of the landmark 1955 exhibition cura ted by Edward Steichen. I was immediately inspired by the global scale of Steichen's masterpiece, and I felt deeply moved by the images and their ability to transcend time and geography by virtue of their universal subject matter: the fundamental human capacity and need for love. I wondered what a collection of contemporary images would look like, and whether - almost fifty years later - it would be possible to piece together a comparable collection chosen from images from every country in the world.
With the benefit of youthful naivety, and equal measures of sincerity and enthusiasm, I embarked upon a journey towards finding out. With encouragement and advice from my family, friends and colleagues, I developed a plan for a new collection called M.I.L.K. Support was sought from my visionary publisher-boss, Tim Hely Hutchinson, and two years later the project was launched in the form of an epic competition involving photographers from all of the world's 192 countries, and a world-record prize.
The scale of this "photographic event" was enormous, but the concept was simple: to search the globe for images that captured spontaneous human moments of intimacy, laughter and kinship. Ultimately, the competition attracted over 40,000 entries from 17,000 photographers - Pulitzer Prize winners, leading professionals and amateurs alike -from 164 countries. In a dedicated space we called the "Milk Shed", we accepted entries by the sackful. Some came as prints, some as negatives, some in handmade packages, most with stories; all somehow wrapped in the ephemera of human life.
The judging process took months and carried a heavy responsibility - how to choose one person's moment over another? With the help of some extraordinary colleagues, and, in particular, the legendary Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt, we finally settled on 300 winning images that became the original M.I.L.K. collection.
It was first exhibited in New York on 11 July 2001, in the elegant yet egalitarian surrounds of Grand Central Terminal. Many of the photographers and some of the subjects of their pictures attended the launch from around the world to celebrate with us, and for a joyous night we were the family of man. It was one of the most extraordinary evenings of my life and it provided a very personal moment with my own family - one that I will treasure forever.
In the days that followed, many people walked through the maze of photographs we had constructed, and viewed the M.I.L.K. collection projected onto an immense screen. Some cried, others laughed. As they moved through the exhibition their shadows were cast onto the backs of other images, a subtle interplay of static image and movement. Here was humanity writ large and writ small, in the moments captured on film and in the people moving freely around them. Moments were exhibited and moments were experienced.
In a bitter irony, the same space in Grand Central Terminal that housed the M.I.L.K. exhibition was used as an emergency blood bank on 11 September, just two weeks after the exhibition closed. Though there would ultimately be little requirement for their donations, people queued to give blood to assist their fellow New Yorkers. The poignancy of this event is at the core of M.I.L.K. and what it represents: our need to believe that there is something that unites us all as humans, something intrinsic within us that urges us to give selflessly, love generously and live without regret.
This brief retelling of M.I.L.K.'s history provides a neat veneer over the reality that the journey leading to its creation was not without moments of despair and significant financial difficulty. We always said we'd never do it again, but projects as enriching and rewarding as M.I.L.K. are hard to find, and as the tenth anniversary of the original competition approached we simply couldn't resist the challenge and attraction of seeking to create another collection. Vissza

Fülszöveg

Laugh as much as you breathe and love as long as you live.
Inspired by the 1950s landmark photographic exhibition, "The Family of Man", M.I.L.K. began as an epic global search to develop a collection of extraordinary and geographically diverse images portraying humanity's "Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship" (M.I.L.K.). This search took the form of a global photographic competition in 1999. It was not only the richest in photographic history, but also one of the most significant, drawing participation from 17,000 professional and amateur photographers in 164 countries. In total over 40,000 images were received by M.I.L.K., including at least four Pulitzer Prize winners. The 300 winning images were chosen by eminent Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt and became the basis for a published collection.
Ten years after the original M.I.L.K. competition comes a brand new collection - Friendship, Family, Love & Laughter. One hundred and fifty extraordinary images from around the world, chosen by Elliott Erwitt, continue to celebrate our moments of intimacy, laughter and kinship. Vissza