Photography is seen as a revolution in the ways we understand the world. Photos do not encourage logical argument or the contexts of knowledge, it evoked the mind with out interpretation. During the 18th century when Daguerre developed the practical method of photography in 1839 there was no use of interpreting the picture as is, it's visual was thought of as a mute artifact. .
Photography plays a major role in our modern life today. On modern life it is powerful in that it is unavoidable The issues we face in our society are too complex and too important to be reduced to thinking of an image as is, rather than analyzing it. The affects of class and race relations by photographs are these stereotypical assumptions of others that have been made apart of our culture. The camera, in its ability to codify and capture an objectivist truth it was also a powerful mechanism of order and control (18) Ewen. The modern means of mechanical reproduction affected not just race and class but other categories as well: disability, age, physical appearance, sexual orientation, and job orientation. Society has come to the conclusion that what is seen can be interpreted as truth. "The very meaning of information of truth is altered by a focus on the visual image of the photography. Truth is no longer something we understand from logical thought, it's the kind of thinking that reading produces" (305) Media & Society. .
The concepts of photography during the times have changed. In Holmes Excerpts he states " Give us a few negatives of a thing worthy seeing, taken from different points of view, and that is all we want of it". It is the personality of the individual who sees what they want to then transfer their own view on others. Experience and being exposed to the different aspects of life and its moral dilemmas makes people open-minded. When the exposure is not there, it gives others the opportunity to manipulate a view to there own perception.