LOOK AGAIN!

The first look — through a square hole centered in a white page — tempts, teases, bestirs: what to make of those nodes and filaments, those cloudy stars? To turn the page is to see the whole — the pinwheel head of a dandelion gone to seed. Then look again — overleaf is a little girl, cheeks puffed, lips pursed, blowing the winged seeds away. Elsewhere, vertical stripes become the brow of a zebra becomes the zebra banded from ears to hoofs; a pitted whorl becomes a spiral seashell becomes a child's head bent, shell pressed to ear. In each of the nine sequences (most dazzling, a peacock; cosiest, the halved pear that follows) perception enlarges from configuration to figure to firmament. No words come between the photographs and the child; the creator of Shapes and Things (1970) uses her camera eye to reveal and relate as nothing else can.