The first ever photographic exhibition was held in 1858 in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It was recorded On 12 February 1858 by Henry Cole, the founding director of the South Kensington Museum, writing in his diary ‘Museum: Queen &c came to private view of the Photographic Socy, being the first exhibition in the Refreshment upper room’. The exhibition was photographically recorded by the museums photographer Charles Thurston Thompson creating the earliest known photographs of an exhibition space.
The Exhibition was made up of around 1009 photos from a contributions of around 250 different photographers from its French counterpart, the Société française de photographie. The Exhibition was made up of a variety of different styles of photography from portraiture, landscape and architecture.
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/0-9/1858-exhibition-of-the-photographic-society-of-london/
The Family of Man Exhibition
The Family of man exhibition was first shown on from January 24 to May 8, 1955 in the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Exhibition was created specifically for the museum by Edward Steichen. It was a hugely popular exhibition with 10 versions of the show being exhibited 91 cities and 38 countries between 1955 and 1962. The Exhibition was made up of 503 pictures from 68 countries and was called “The greatest photographic exhibition of all time” on the front of the phonebook of the exhibition. However, even with its huge popularity the exhibition also received a lot of criticism.
The Exhibition is made up of different photographs from a range of different photographers mostly from the life magazine archive. The vast majority of the images were contemporary documentary photography grouped together in 37 sections which depicted a narrated story of human life. With the images also came criticism as, it was protested by Theophilus Neokonkwo that the images ‘depicted all non-Europeans, and especially Africans, “either half clothed or naked” and as “social inferiors” – as victims of illness, poverty, and despair, while white Americans and Europeans were represented mostly “in dignified cultural states – wealthy, healthy and wise.”’ (FKMagazine, 2018) His comments were to point out the fact that Western photographers where coming to their countries and staying for a short while and having tendency to create images as shocking as possible.
The exhibition is something that has made huge press and was intended to show ‘that all people are similar in their joys, pain, and work – was not especially thought-provoking, unexpected, or radical’ (FKMagazine,2018)
The Family of Man: The Photography Exhibition that Everybody Loves to Hate
Documentary Perspectives 