Many photographers approach making photographs like poetry, where each photograph functions as an independent poem. Collected into an ensemble their photographs embody variations of related compositional strategies, techniques, and themes. In a book such photographs are largely interchangeable because what they add to the ensemble does not depend on a specific context or position.

But photographs can be used to convey meaning based on their position in a sequence or on their presentation on the page, much like the order of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters in prose.

Two books I have reviewed for PhotoBook Journal illustrate how this works. In Duane Michals’ book A Visit with Magritte, for example, photographs function not as individual tableaux but rather as specific narrative elements. After approaching Magritte’s house, then Magritte, and next focusing on Magritte and his paintings, the sequenced photographs introduce Magritte’s wife, followed by more photos of her and then of feminine themed paintings. In Michals’ series the photographs are anchored in a specific order, and the book has a beginning, middle, and end. Michals presents his photographs as an experience that he shares with us as we turn the pages. As with a film, the pictures accumulate in our heads as visual events, each image adding its themes, associations, and compositional weight.

Another book, Richard Zybert’s Notebook on Time, uses photographs the same way. Like Michals’ photographs in Magritte, viewed individually the images in Zybert’s book would not be memorable. Instead, plain, ordinary descriptive photographs – snapshots really – are sequenced to tell an impactful story.

You can think of this as using photographs as prose rather than as poetry.

I discovered this in the early 1980s when I was working on my photographic sequence A Second Year in France, published in 1982. The goal was to use photographs to represent the chronology of my experience over the course of a year. After I had printed what I thought were the strongest photos, when I put them together it did not work. But when I reconsidered which photos could contribute to the narrative, other photographs had important roles to play – introducing themes, providing background context, documenting details of everyday routines, and serving as transitions or conclusions.

My recent photo books are also composed as chapters of sequenced photographs, and individual pictures are not typically interchangeable. Images chosen for their contributions to the compositional and thematic flow are paired with similar or contrasting partners and shaped into a purposeful visual narrative.

Prose instead of poetry.