The Family of Man: An introduction (and special issue contents)
Citation
Hoffman, Katherine. “The Family of Man: An introduction.” History of Photography, vol. 29, no. 4 (Winter 2005), pp. 317–319. DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2005.10442813. Issue is the journal’s fiftieth-anniversary special issue on The Family of Man.
A second article in the same issue, located via the same Taylor & Francis DOI structure during this round:
- Anonymous (search-result attribution; reviewer not named on the search-snippet page), “Sowing the seeds / setting the stage: Steichen, Stieglitz and The Family of Man,” History of Photography, vol. 29, no. 4 (2005). DOI: 10.1080/03087298.2005.10442814. Pages NOT confirmed from a fetched source this round.
- Title provenance: this second-article title rests on a Google search snippet to the Taylor & Francis Online page; neither the article body nor the abstract page was fetched this round, and the title’s exact wording (including the “Sowing the seeds / setting the stage” punctuation) has NOT been independently confirmed against the publisher’s own bibliographic record. Future fetch should reconcile any minor variance.
Tier justification
Tier 2: peer-reviewed scholarly journal (History of Photography, Routledge / Taylor & Francis), explicitly listed in CREDIBILITY.md among Tier-2 journals. The 2005 issue is a dedicated special issue marking the fiftieth anniversary of the exhibition’s 1955 opening at MoMA — i.e., the most concentrated single block of peer-reviewed scholarly engagement with The Family of Man in the 2000s.
Relevance
The 2005 History of Photography special issue is the central peer-reviewed venue in which the 2000s revisitation of The Family of Man unfolded in Anglophone scholarship. Issue confirmed via Taylor & Francis DOI metadata fetched 2026-05-07 (DOIs 10.1080/03087298.2005.10442813 and 10.1080/03087298.2005.10442814 surfaced through web search snippets to Taylor & Francis Online). The issue framing — fifty years after MoMA 1955 — explains the 2000s scholarly cluster (Back/Schmidt-Linsenhoff 2004, Stimson 2006) chronologically.
Hoffman’s introduction (per the Google search snippet shown 2026-05-07): “The exhibition The Family of Man, curated by Edward Steichen with the assistance of Wayne Miller, opened at the Museum of Modern Art (New York) on 25 January 1955” and notes that “various scholars have examined the history of the exhibition and its cultural and political meaning over the past five decades, and the exhibit merits renewed exploration as it surpasses its fiftieth anniversary.” (Snippet text only; full article body NOT fetched this round.)
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-05-07): Tandfonline DOI page returned permission-denied via WebFetch this round. The article abstract / body was NOT read. Bibliographic data (volume, issue, year, journal, DOI, opening sentences quoted above) is from a Google search snippet to the Taylor & Francis page, fetched 2026-05-07.
- Full article text NOT confirmed. No further quotations recorded.
Notes
verified: false: full-text not accessed; bibliographic core (journal, volume, issue, year, DOI, author, opening sentences of introduction) confirmed via search-snippet only.- A future pass should: (1) complete a tandfonline / library-proxy fetch of the introduction and at least one substantive article; (2) confirm the full table of contents of the issue; (3) note which contributors engage Barthes, Sekula, Sontag, Sandeen, or Stimson directly.
- The 2005 special issue is conceptually paired with the 2004 Back/Schmidt-Linsenhoff bilingual volume (
src-back-schmidt-linsenhoff-2004) and Stimson 2006 (src-stimson-2006). All three sit within an 18-month-wide cluster of scholarly fiftieth-anniversary engagement. - Perspective: critical / historical.