Susan Sontag’s On Photography brings to attention how photographs evolved to what they have become today. Photographs started out as a way of capturing a moment of time. They were more a part of the world captured at one moment of time than they were an interpretation of the world. Photographs were used from surveillance to a form of art or hobby. From there photography evolved into a more transcendent art form, pictures with meaning.

Walt Whitman tried to capture regular unordinary objects and show their beautiful side. As quoted in Sontag’s On Photography “each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty.” I can relate to this as a hobby of mine is working with cars. With that come interests in photography of cars. And from my personal experience, a regular picture of my car can seem plain and simple, but when a professional photographer captures a car identical to mine, the photographer can produce the beautiful side of the object.

Another type of photography evolved is Arbus’s work. Her photographs capture the ugly side, or the abnormal side of life. She likes to take pictures of things that are not of the norm. Such photos include the circus, nudes, and a boy marching for pro war. Her artwork is another defined aspect of the possibilities of photography. Although photography started strictly as documents capturing one moment of the world at one particular time, its has evolved into a image capable of inflicting a sense of emotion and connection.