A Post-Fascist Family of Man? Cold War Humanism, Democracy and Photography in Germany
Citation
James, Sarah E. “A Post-Fascist Family of Man? Cold War Humanism, Democracy and Photography in Germany.” Oxford Art Journal 35, no. 3 (December 2012): 315–336. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcs032.
Tier justification
Tier 2: peer-reviewed article in the Oxford Art Journal (Oxford University Press), a leading journal for art history scholarship listed among acceptable Tier-2 venues in CREDIBILITY.md.
Relevance
The only substantial peer-reviewed study focused specifically on The Family of Man’s German reception. The article establishes that the exhibition ‘opened its European tour in West Berlin’ and examines the show in relation to the crisis of German identity, US-administered democratisation programmes of the 1940s–50s, the Holocaust, and Cold War culture in a divided Germany. It also analyses the 1964 German counter-exhibition Was ist der Mensch? organised by Karl Pawek as a direct response to Steichen’s model. Essential for the Berlin venue and German reception chapter of this project.
Key excerpts / pages
- Search-result quote (verbatim from search result, accessed 2026-04-30): ‘The Family of Man, frequently criticized as American cold war propaganda, opened its European tour in West Berlin, purporting to reveal the constancy of human nature throughout the world, and on each side of the Iron Curtain.’
- The article’s stated aim (from search result): ‘rehistoricising and repoliticising The Family of Man in relation to issues of humanism and democracy in a divided Germany of the 1950s and 1960s.’
Notes
- Body text NOT consulted in this round. The DOI resolves to an Oxford Academic abstract page; full text is paywalled. No page-specific quotations are recorded beyond the abstract.
- A free PDF is circulated on multiple academic sites including phototheoria.ch and academia.edu (URLs noted in this round’s search results; not fetched).
- The article provides the primary scholarly attestation for the West Berlin opening of the international tour — a claim that
research/world-tour.mdflags as ‘not named in any source fetched this round’ for the prior session. This article provides that attestation at the secondary-scholarly level (the article’s abstract states it directly); primary archival confirmation (USIA records, MoMA International Program records) remains outstanding. - The 1964 Pawek counter-exhibition discussed in this article (555 photographs, 264 photographers, 30 countries) is relevant context for the German chapter of FoM reception; the Pawek catalog itself (NOT consulted this round) is a separate potential source entry.
- Perspective: art history / critical theory. Complements
src-james-2012-post-fascistwithsrc-barthes-1957(French critical reception) andsrc-sandeen-2015-guatemala(Latin American reception). - A future pass should complete full-text access via a library proxy or the circulating PDF to extract page-specific quotations.