Elliott Erwitt was covering this important event which took place on 20th of January 2009 on a job for Newsweek. An online slideshow was published and can be browsed here: Visions of the Inauguration.
Also the monthly magazine Photo District News (PDN) interviewed Erwitt after the event about his thoughts and experiences, and the article can be read at: Elliott Erwitt on the Inauguration.
Daryl Lang who interviewed Erwitt touched upon one aspect of modern society, demonstarted in a below photo, which is part of the slideshow:
Some twenty years ago everyone gathered would have been clapping
or waving, but nowadays people are preoccupied with documenting
(exactly the same thing was happening when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from the house arrest after many years and was greeted outside by...cameras - YouTube video).
This is what Erwitt said on this phenomena:
EE: Everybody and their uncle has a camera. Everybody’s taking pictures. Even on the stand during the inauguration, people were taking pictures. It’s really extraordinary. No event goes uncovered.
PDN: There’s a lot of ways to read that development. Do you think that’s a positive thing, or do you think people maybe ought to live the moment a little more, and spend less time documenting it?
EE: I think there’s a bit more than necessary of people playing with their little instruments, but I don’t know. With regard to the event, you can’t help that. You just want to know that you were there. It’s kind of proof that you exist almost. So from that point of view I think it’s fine.
Not only the fact that everyone there was taking pictures, taking little time to absorb properly what was going on, is extraordinary, but also the change in civilised human's mentality is simply amazing (I had to separate the civilised because it only occurs in a modern society) . How a discovery of photographic processes changed and influenced lives over 'just' 160 years of existence - that's extraordinary.
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