click! photography changes everything

click! photography changes everything [http://click.si.edu/] is a Smithsonian Photography Initiative website that explores how photography changes every aspect of our lives: who we are, what we see, what we do, where we go, what we want, and what we remember. 

Using these themes as a jumping-off-point, the site employs photographs, short films and essays by invited contributors to explore topics as broad as how old snapshots can change our perceptions of our families, how photography influenced the potency of arguments about race relations made by Civil Rights leaders, and how digital photography facilitates the identification of new species of fish. In addition to the films and essays by invited contributors, click! recently invited online visitors to contribute their own photographs and commentaries on “how photography shapes the way we understand the world” [http://click.si.edu/Contribute.aspx]. To this end, click! offers something for the serious scholar, the casual browser, and everyone in between. 

The power of click! stems from the fact that it capitalizes on the uniqueness and democracy of both photography as a medium and of the web as an interactive space. click! is neither a clear-cut history lesson, nor a treatise on photography as a high art medium—it is an organic exploration of the way that photography frames our everyday lives.