John Berger discusses the effects of photography in Appearances and in Ways Of Seeing. He argues that the act of photography decontextualizes lived moments of history, which must then be given a media context for presentation. Because of this photography has serious implications for how we think of ourselves and our society.

Berger points out that photography always appears to document the truth. When one snaps a photo of a friend, or a tree, or a car, the appropriate image appears on the paper, seemingly just the way it happened. The question arises as to whether this is really the case, however. For when one snaps the photo of the friend, while that document appears to be true, the truth is relative. One cannot see necessarily the surroundings, or the people the friend was with, or any number of infinite data the camera did not record. Berger also notes that it is the information we bring to a photograph that enables us to make sense of it, and one caption as opposed to another will dramatically affect the way we read the photograph.

The upshot of this is that photographs, are in essence, meaningless, except to those present at the snapping of the shot. Where the social significance of this comes in is that photos are held to be such artifacts of truth. Of course, many people are aware of trick photography, but generally people don't think about the tricks of "real" photography. What is not shown is often more important than what is shown, and the manner in which a photo is presented can be more important than anything in it. Thus a photograph can "lie" as easily as a drawing, but a photograph always appears to show the truth. A photograph always represents reality.

This principle makes every mass-produced photograph a sort of Trojan Horse. Because the concept of truth is held so firmly in our understanding of photography, we as a general public are subject to great manipulation by those who produced the photographs. Thus our political thinking may be unwittingly swayed when we are presented with "positive" images of Clinton, even if he's only smiling because he's winning, and "negative" images of Bush, even if he was born with a crooked mouth. We will always be subject to manipulation as a society and a culture as long as we take what is an utterly pliable medium to be a documentary one.