Visions of the Inauguration

For our election coverage NEWSWEEK teamed up with photographer Elliott Erwitt, and asked him to record his impressions—from the opening concert to the glamorous balls—of Barack Obama's historic inauguration. And what he saw, more than anything else, were thousands and thousands of people just like him: Americans recording the moment for themselves.

“In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it,” said Susan Sontag in her classic essay from On Photography. That sentiment is especially true in the following images: