HUMANKIND is a contemporary response to the classic exhibition, The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. The show was seen internationally by tens of thousands of people, and the catalogue sold millions of copies and is still in print.

VII consists of award winning photographers Marcus Bleasdale, the late Alexandra Boulat, Lauren Greenfield, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Antonin Kratochvil, Joachim Ladefoged, Christopher Morris, James Nachtwey, Franco Pagetti, and John Stanmeyer. VII was the centerpiece of HASTED HUNT’s debut exhibition in October 2005. This will be their second show with the gallery.

The Family of Man looked at Man’s indomitable nature, especially in the face of adversity. In his introduction, Steichen wrote “It was conceived as a mirror of the universal elements and emotions in the everydayness of life – as a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.”

The project was acclaimed for its affirmative point of view, countering the legacy of despair from World War II and the Korean conflict. The exhibition toured around the world for many years; the book was arguably the most successful photography book ever printed and circulated. The “humanistic” point of view has been simultaneously celebrated and ridiculed. Its collective upbeat illustration of a world with happy children and industrious, uncomplaining workers displayed in a labyrinthine, “modern” installation was criticized for being superficial, even bathetic.

To most contemporary eyes, however, The Family of Man is an astonishing record of classic photographs.

Reportage itself seems to have changed very little. Most work is now color and digital. In HUMANKIND the photographers of VII see a world that is different from 50 years ago, with ongoing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, AIDS, and a compromised environment; yet it seems the same. Exceptional with HUMANKIND is the unique combination of talent, experience, persistence, imagination, compassion and vision the photographers of VII bring to it.