click! Photography Changes Everything

What We See

Photography Changes What We See

Photography allows us to see what the human eye cannot, what lies outside our daily experience, and determines what we choose to show to each other. Images and commentaries explore subjects that include changing photographic technologies, journalism, censorship, perception, surveillance, time, and motion.

Featured Stories

Photography changes what and how much we remember
By Jeremy Wolfe

This grid of images is the first in a series of three, part of an exercise that reveals the strength of our memory for photographic images. Glance at each image in the grid for a second or so. Then click on and look at the second grid of images that accompanies this story.

Jeremy Wolfe, whose research focuses on visual search and visual attention, describes how, when we even just glance at a photograph, our brains create remarkably specific memories.

Photography changes how art history is taught
By Dorothy Moss

Dorothy Moss, lecturer in American Studies for Smith College’s “Smith at the Smithsonian,” describes how the spread of photographic reproductions of art works changed the field of art history, and public access to art, in the late 19th century.

Photography changes the practice of forensic anthropology
By Doug Ubelaker

This image illustrates cut marks on a third cervical vertebra of an adult victim.

Doug Ubelaker, curator and senior scientist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, explains how photography has transformed forensics.