Overview

Reception

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Schoolchildren viewing a Family of Man tour-edition installation. The exhibition's appeal to young viewers is part of what made it the most-attended photography show of the twentieth century — and part of what its critics accused it of: the universalism that worked on schoolchildren is the universalism Barthes called "sentimental humanism."U.S. National Archives · DPLA · Public domain

This article is pending research.

The Family of Man has been one of the most intensely debated exhibitions in the history of photography. The major critical landmarks in its reception include:

• Roland Barthes, “The Great Family of Man” (1957) — the foundational critique, arguing that the show’s universalist humanism flattens history and politics.
• Susan Sontag, On Photography (1977) — a related sentimentalism critique.
• Allan Sekula, “The Traffic in Photographs” (1981) — ideological reading in Marxist aesthetic terms.
• Eric Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (1995) — the standard historical study; complicates both defense and critique.
• Blake Stimson, The Pivot of the World (2006) — re-reads the show within post-war photographic modernism.
• Fred Turner, The Democratic Surround (2013) — places the show within liberal-democratic design culture.

Each of these will get its own Source article.

Perspective note Reception is a contested topic by definition. Every summary on this page will tag the perspective being summarized (curatorial, critical, historical, institutional) and cite its Tier-1 or Tier-2 source.

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