Sontag argues that photography fosters a voyeuristic relationship with the world and can diminish the meaning of events.

In the book, Sontag expresses her views on the history and present-day role of photography in societies as of the 1970s.

Among these, she contrasts Diane Arbus's work with that of Depression-era documentary photography commissioned by the Farm Security Administration.

Sontag argues that the proliferation of photographic images had begun to establish within people a "chronic voyeuristic relation to the world.

In 1977, William H. Gass, writing in The New York Times, said the book "shall surely stand near the beginning of all our thoughts upon the subject" of photography.