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Source

The Camera versus the Artist

Saarinen, Aline B. The New York Times 1955 Tier 3 Unverified Accessed 2026-04-29 View source ↗

Citation

Saarinen, Aline B. “The Camera versus the Artist.” The New York Times, 1955. [Exact date and page number not confirmed in this session.]

Relevance

A contemporaneous 1955 review of The Family of Man by the New York Times associate art critic. Saarinen’s central question — “Has photography replaced painting as the great visual art of our time?” — frames the exhibition as a watershed moment in the institutional status of photography. This is one of a small number of named reviews from the opening-run period (January–May 1955) and represents the reception of the show by the newspaper of record in its home city.

Key excerpts / pages

  • Saarinen asked, in the review: “Has photography replaced painting as the great visual art of our time?” (Quoted in Wikipedia’s article “The Family of Man,” fetched 2026-04-29. Not read directly from the original article this session.)
  • No other text from the article was obtained this session.

Notes

  • Article title “The Camera versus the Artist” and the paraphrase of its central question are cited in the body text of Wikipedia’s article “The Family of Man” (fetched via https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Family_of_Man&action=raw, 2026-04-29). Wikipedia’s ref tag for this article is incomplete — the raw wikitext did not supply an exact date, page number, ProQuest ID, or stable URL.
  • Flagged verified: false because the original NYT article was not fetched or read this session. The url field is blank: no Wayback Machine snapshot was found at any tested URL variant (/1955/01/25/archives/…, /1955/01/30/archives/…). NYT.com paywalled access was not attempted (domain not in the allowlist for this session).
  • Aline B. Saarinen’s role: Wikipedia’s article on Aline Bernstein Saarinen (fetched 2026-04-29) confirms she served as associate art editor and critic at the New York Times from 1948, and continued writing for the paper under her married name (Saarinen) after 1954.
  • To verify: access the NYT TimesMachine or ProQuest Historical Newspapers to obtain exact date, section, and page; then read and quote the text directly before promoting verified to true.
  • Perspective: institutional reception / contemporary press. Complements Eleanor Roosevelt’s public endorsement (cited in Wikipedia) and the Aperture professional-community debate (src-aperture-1955-controversial).
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