Inspired by Edward Steichen's The Family Of Man, M.I.L.K., Moments of Intimacy, Laughter, and Kinship, was founded on what is arguably the largest photographic competition ever conducted. With a record prize of 750,000, the contest attracted 17,000 photographers from 164 countries. From the 40,000 photographs submitted, 300 were selected that best captured and celebrated the essence of humanity and conveyed real and spontaneous emotion. These three stunning pictorial journals feature 100 photos each from this competition and are just the beginning of a vast publishing project that will include versions of the books in a multitude of languages, calendars and datebooks, as well as an exhibition tour that will travel to fifteen international cities over the following three years.
LOVE
FRIENDSHIP
Cutting across race and nationality, these photographs bring to life the intimate moments and emotions shared by all families, whether in Australia, Rwanda, Colombia, or the United States. These photos depict the joy, heartbreak, and love that shaped and make up our lives. Here are the bonds that bring us together as parent and child, sister and brother, youth and elder. From a father's first look at his new baby to a weathered grandma's embrace, the laughter of octogenarian uncle and nephew to the promise of a mother's kiss, these powerful images tell the story of humanity and celebrate its deepest emotional connection.
The book was conceived to honor what it is to be part of a family. Look at the men, women, and children on these pages. In their faces you will recognize yourself and your loved ones, for you, too, are a member of the great kinship that is the human family. As James McBride writes, "without family, we are all a tribe of nomads, cut adrift, disconnected, wandering the earth with neither time nor place nor history to give our aching souls a home." Family is a universal homecoming, a commemoration of the human spirit itself.
We are surrounded by love -- the fierce emotion that consumes us as it expands our hearts and enables us to overcome the worst and savor the wondrous. Love is the nectar that inspires us as poets and parents, companions and neighbors, siblings and citizens. It is a depth of sentiment that defines us and shapes our humanity, a river connecting the nostalgia of the old with the dreams of youth. It is the most profound, powerful, and encompassing force in life.
Here is love in all its facets: the adoration of a girl as she gazes into her father's eyes; the passion of young lovers kissing beside a fountain; the attachment of a boy to his dog; the contentment of a family asleep at the beach; the devotion of an elderly wife reading to her husband from a book written in Braille; the tenderness of a little sister embracing her big brother; the affection of two entwined fingers.
What is a friend?
In this beautiful photographic portrait, 100 talented photographers, answer this question as they vividly render this fragile, yet powerful, essential bond.
As Maeve Binchy so poignantly describes in her prologue, "as a teacher, a traveler and a writer, I have wandered many places in the world, always and everywhere being touched by images of friendship. Tiny children going to school in Bali, picking huge banana leaves to shelter each other when tropical rain storms threatened their immaculate white shirts. Two old men in Athens, so lost in their daily chess game that they were unaware of the traffic swirling around and tourists pushing past them... Boys in Scotland who were playing brilliant football in an old yard with their folded jackets serving as the goal posts... Shoppers in New York clutching each other with excitement at the thought of the next bargain possibly around the next corner."
