Part of the Intro from 'The Photographer's Eye' by John Szarkowski

"Photographers shot '...objects of all sorts, sizes and shapes...without ever pausing to ask themselves, is this or that artistic?' Painting was difficult, expensive, and precious, and it recorded what was known to be important. Photography was easy, cheap and ubiquitous, and it recorded anything: shop windows and sod houses and family pets and steam engines and unimportant people. And once made objective and permanent, immortalized in a picture, these trivial things took on importance."