Pinney

In his introduction of "How the Other Half...", Pinney suggests tracing the history of photography as more than something that plays a role of cultural significance to the west. Rather, he emphasizes that photography reached various cultures at the same time, playing out its societal impact in different ways. Each culture appropriated the use of photography in a manner specific to its own uses, and to merely trace the development of photography as something relevant to Western society is doing an injustice to its history. He calls for an extension of the history of photography "laterally outward to domains outside the purview of conventional narratives"; essentially, the history of photographic use and development is equivalent in its importance to each place, yet its functions vary drastically and the way that photography functioned needs to investigated and explored in order to provide for a complete history of photography.
Photos mean different things in different contexts. Photographic images are particular in the sense that they allow for a multitude of discourse. They also allow for the entrance of the random- in this way they are reflective of modern life more so than any other form of visual documentation. Pinney explores this briefly, stating that "the photograph ceases to be a univocal, flat, and uncontestable indexical trace of what was, and becomes instead a complexly textured artifact". A photograph transforms into something three-dimensional, with a quality of infinity in its ability to transcend all space and time in gathering meaning. Its interpretation is contingent upon its context; rather than being a glimpse of what was, it is all together in one, whats has been, what is, and what will be. The subversive code present in every photographic image makes it open and available to other readings and uses, this subversive code being randomness.
The random, the absurd, the unintentional, all become the subject matter of a photo because of the way it functions. In trying to catch one thing, photos inevitably contain all that is exposed to the lens. This lack of control in photography makes the random, valuable. This randomness alters the image in its entirety, if not a the present moment, then definitely in the future. Looking past can be equated with looking into what's next. The photograph allows us to retrace its own visual history, exposing the fact that colonialism was not merely an American/European practice, but rather something performed by many other nations and cultural traditions. Foucault and Said's anaylses oversate the power and agency of the oppressor, the powerful, the picture taker, while not considering the agency that rests within the subject.
Pinney points the characteristic change in photography to be the fact that it is operative in a field of dialogue and refusal - this is where the randomness comes into play. The subjects are now taking the technology which once oppressed them and using it to create their own visual realities.  Heidegger's claim that the modern world as a picture, controlled by human subjects, allowed photo to function the way it did in the West, also provides us with insight to how it now functions in terms of indigenous people exposed to media such as film and photo. By creating their own realities through image, there is no telling in how they will reorganize their cultural structures.