ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author summarizes previously voiced challenges as well as add new facets to its critique. He highlights the omissions and errors in Barthes’s review, its open and hidden incongruities, and historicize the universalizing stance of its specific French post-war perspective. The author generates fresh insights for critics and viewers alike in assessing the complex message of roughly 500 photos by some 270 photographers that constitute The Family of Man. In addition to more general criticism, it is also important to note that Barthes simply overlooks or omits the specific French instances of 'perfectly historical' photos in The Family of Man. In instances in which Barthes is explicitly discussing 'the failure of photography' in his review, he is not addressing the particulars of The Family of Man, but is repeating well-known Brechtian doubts about the medium at large.
