Abstract

In April 1957, one of the most popular photographic exhibitions of all time, The Family of Man, traveled to Seoul, South Korea. It was two years after the exhibition had premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Remarkably, South Korea achieved a record in the number of attendees. About three hundred thousand people visited the Gyeongbokgung Museum in a span of only one month. In the convalescent moment after the Korean War, when Korea suffered from a lack of cultural infrastructure, the success of this exhibit represented more than just an anomaly. This paper examines the process of organizing the tour exhibition in Seoul, the cultural phenomena following the exhibition, and the long-term effects that the introduction of these photographic images, along with the universal value of humanism that The Family of Man intended to promote, had on Korean audiences. By investigating the various aspects of the exhibition from multiple post-war Korean contexts, such as its exhibition space, marketing strategy, the emergence of the neologism “인간가족 (Human Family),” and artistic responses by Korean photographers, this paper aims to demonstrate how Korean society experienced, understood, and localized the content of the exhibition, inspiring an unexpected deviation from the original objective of communicating a ‘universal humanity.’