Like Family (1965), a showpiece pairing of Ken Heyman's Family-of-Man photographs (over 180) and Mead's world view which could deflect us, at least for a time, from global disaster. In the current flux among sectors in various stages of development it is evident that the hopes of twenty-five years ago have not been realized. Mead reviews the failures in dealing with universal poverty, hunger, disease and ignorance--mainly the result of unlimited economic growth. Planners tended to think of the world "in parts"--autonomous powers vs. victims, customers, sources of raw materials, ideological converts. As she traces the conflicts and challenges of our times--urbanization, increase of crime, changes in expectations--Mead, like Heyman's camera, reaches for the general through the particular. In Mead's Weltanshauung "nothing is too small or large" to take into account as all of us hurtle into the future. Some ringing summit oratory complemented by empathic photographs.
