As you may remember from your chemistry classes, the periodic table organizes known elements based on their characteristics. Like chess pieces, some elements are very common and others exceedingly rare. In combination, they create new matter just as components in photography create meaning.

In this book, we will use the periodic table of elements as an ongoing guide—as a metaphor for thinking about images. The elements are “relative” in their appearance: that is to say we experience gold as a solid and water as a liquid. However, by changing the temperature enough one way or the other, gold becomes a liquid and water becomes a solid.

Combining chemical elements together can lead to compounds whose emergent properties bear little relation to the constituent parts—and by altering the ratio of one element to another, even more variability can be introduced. The elements approach, both in terms of making and reading images, therefore does not rely purely on the element(s) but also on the ways in which they can be combined.

Then there is the “chemistry”—and here, I am referring to an altogether more elusive quality that we can feel but can be very hard to pin down, at least at first. Initially, we feel drawn to something, to someone, or to some image—and in those cases that matter to us personally, this experience can be quite intense. In many cases, it doesn’t feel right to start analyzing such feelings: we should accept them, enjoy them, work with them. However, I believe that while people should enjoy being attracted to an image, you should also try to understand why. And of course, there will always be the shocking or distressing images to confront; you can feel drawn and repelled in equal measure, but you shouldn’t stop looking and questioning.

We’ll be exploring the images very closely for how the combination of elements can become greater than the sum of their parts. How it makes you feel; whether your encounter with the image has a lasting effect—one that takes you beyond what is represented and continues to keep you engaged.

This is the subtext.

The best journeys, at least for me, are not preplanned with a particular destination in mind. The most satisfying outcome to me, leads to the discovery of places I hadn’t known of and hadn’t imagined. Sometimes this will lead to great joy. When you meet what you have always known for the first time. That is how we can find a home in places far away. This is traveling with no map and no destination. This is exciting, hard, even disorientating, and a little dangerous at times. Relying on our own wits to deal with what we discover, is not embarking on a journey with a passport, credit cards, cellphones, and other multiple safety nets. Instead, it is as if you just start hiking, you just set off and surrender to whatever experiences you encounter. As this is unique for each of us, the examples in this book attempt to demonstrate how this can be tackled in thirty-five distinct chapters, even though some have flowing boundaries between them. I hope to slowly build into the deeper narrative and subtext and to invite you along on your own terms.

Any guidance I give is not meant to become the way by which you learn to follow. Rather, I hope that when you are done with this book you won’t be looking for guidance in this regard any longer—that in fact you can lead your own exciting expeditions into the visual jungle, confident in knowing that you will always have the skill to read images in your own way.

Let’s go to the images and see what we can experience through them.