photo essay definition in english

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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

Penelope G. To Ana Mireles Such a well written and helpful article for an writer who wants to inclue photo essay in her memoir. Thank you. I will get to work on this new skill. Penelope G.

Herman Krieger Photo essays in black and white

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How to Create a Photo Essay in 9 Steps (with Examples)

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What is a photo essay?

• Photo essays vs photo stories
• How photo essays help you
• 9 Steps to create photo essays

How to share your photo essays

Read Time: 11 minutes

Gather up a handful of images that seem to go together, and voila! It’s a photo essay, right? Well… no. Though, this is a common misconception.

In reality, a photo essay is much more thoughtful and structured than that. When you take the time to craft one, you’re using skills from all facets of our craft – from composition to curation.

In this guide, you’ll learn what makes a photo essay an amazing project that stretches your skills. You'll also learn exactly how to make one step by step.

• Photo essay vs photo story

A photo essay is a collection of images based around a theme, a topic, a creative approach, or an exploration of an idea. Photo essays balance visual variety with a cohesive style and concept.

What's the difference between a photo essay and a photo story?

The terms photo essay and photo story are often used interchangeably. Even the dictionary definition of “photo essay” includes using images to convey either a theme or a story.

But in my experience, a photo essay and a photo story are two different things. As you delve into the field of visual storytelling, distinguishing between the two helps you to take a purposeful approach to what you’re making .

The differences ultimately lie in the distinctions between theme, topic and story.

Themes are big-picture concepts. Example: Wildness

Topics are more specific than themes, but still overarching. Example : Wild bears of Yellowstone National Park

Stories are specific instances or experiences that happen within, or provide an example for, a topic or theme. Example: A certain wild bear became habituated to tourists and was relocated to maintain its wildness

Unlike a theme or topic, a story has particular elements that make it a story. They include leading characters, a setting, a narrative arc, conflict, and (usually) resolution.

With that in mind, we can distingush between a photo essay and a photo story.

Themes and Topics vs Stories

A photo essay revolves around a topic, theme, idea, or concept. It visually explores a big-picture something .

This allows a good deal of artistic leeway where a photographer can express their vision, philosophies, opinions, or artistic expression as they create their images.

A photo story  is a portfolio of images that illustrate – you guessed it – a story.

Because of this, there are distinct types of images that a photo story uses that add to the understanding, insight, clarity and meaning to the story for viewers. While they can certainly be artistically crafted and visually stunning, photo stories document something happening, and rely on visual variety for capturing the full experience.

A photo essay doesn’t need to have the same level of structured variety that a photo story requires. It can have images that overlap or are similar, as they each explore various aspects of a theme.

Photo essays can be about any topic. If you live in a city, consider using your nature photography to make an essay about the wildlife that lives in your neighborhood . 

The role of text with photos

A photo story typically runs alongside text that narrates the story. We're a visual species, and the images help us feel like we are there, experiencing what's happening. So, the images add significant power to the text, but they're often a partner to it.

This isn’t always the case, of course. Sometimes photo stories don’t need or use text. It’s like reading a graphic novel that doesn’t use text. Moving through the different images that build on each other ultimately unveils the narrative.

Photo essays don’t need to rely on text to illuminate the images' theme or topic. The photographer may use captions (or even a text essay), or they may let the images speak for themselves.

Definitions are helpful guidelines (not strict rules)

Some people categorize photo essays as either narrative or thematic. That's essentially just calling photo stories “narrative photo essays” and photo essays “thematic photo essays.”

But, a story is a defined thing, and any writer/editor will tell you themes and topics are not the same as stories. And we use the word “story” in our daily lives as it’s defined. So, it makes far more sense to name the difference between a photo essay and a photo story, and bask in the same clarity writers enjoy .

Photo stories illustrate a particular experience, event, narrative, something that happened or is happening.

Photo essays explore an idea, concept, topic, theme, creative approach, big-picture something .

Both photo essays and photo stories are immensely powerful visual tools. And yes, the differences between them can certainly be blurred, as is always the case with art.

Simply use this distinction as a general guideline, providing extra clarity around what you’re making and why you're making it.

To dig into specific types of images used to create powerful photo stories, check out this training: 6 Must-Have Shots for a Photo Story. 

Meanwhile, let’s dig deeper into photo essays.

Photo essays are a chance to try new styles or techniques that stretch your skills and creativity. This image was part of an essay exploring simplicity and shape, and helped me learn new skills in black and white post-processing.

How photo essays improve your photography

Creating photo essays is an amazing antidote if you’ve ever felt a lack of direction or purpose in your photography. Photo essays help build your photographic skills in at least 3 important ways.

1. You become more strategic in creating a body of work

It's easy to get stuck in a rut of photographing whatever pops up in front of you. And when you do, you end up with a collection of stand-alone shots.

These singles may work fine as a print, a quick Instagram post, or an addition to your gallery of shots on your website. But amassing a bunch of one-off shots limits your opportunities as a photographer for everything from exhibits to getting your work published.

Building photo essays pushes you to think strategically about what you photograph, why, and how. You're working toward a particular deliverable – a cohesive visual essay – with the images you create.

This elevates your skills in crafting your photo essay, and in how you curate the rest of your work, from galleries on your website to selecting images to sell as prints .

2. You become more purposeful in your composition skills

Composition is so much more than just following the rule of thirds, golden spirals, or thinking about the angle of light in a shot.

Composition is also about thinking ahead in what you’re trying to accomplish with a photograph – from what you’re saying through it to its emotional impact on a viewer – and where it fits within a larger body of work.

Photo essays push you to think critically about each shot – from coming up with fresh compositions for familiar subjects, to devising surprising compositions to fit within a collection, to creating compositions that expand on what’s already in a photo essay.

You’re pushed beyond creating a single pleasing frame, which leads you to shoot more thoughtfully and proactively than ever.

(Here’s a podcast episode on switching from reactive shooting to proactive shooting.)

3. You develop strong editing and curation skills

Selecting which images stay, and which get left behind is one of the hardest jobs on a photographer’s to-do list. Mostly, it’s because of emotional attachment.

You might think it’s an amazing shot because you know the effort that went into capturing it. Or perhaps when you look at it, you get a twinge of the joy or exhilaration you felt the moment you captured it. There’s also the second-guessing that goes into which of two similar images is the best – which will people like more? So you’re tempted to just show both.

Ultimately, great photographers appear all the more skilled because they only show their best work. That in and of itself is a skill they’ve developed through years of ruthlessly editing their own work.

Because the most powerful photo essays only show a handful of extraordinary images, you’re bound to develop the very same critical skill (and look all the more talented because of it).

Photo essays are also a great stepping stone to creating photo stories. If you’re interested in moving beyond stand-alone shots and building stories, shooting photo essays will get your creative brain limbered up and ready for the adventure of photo stories.

A photo essay exploring the natural history of a favorite species is an exciting opportunity for an in-depth study. For me, that was a photo essay on emotive images of the American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) as it hunts in streams. 

9 Simple steps to create your photo essays

1. clarify your theme.

Choose a theme, topic, or concept you want to explore. Spend some time getting crystal clear on what you want to focus on. It helps to write out a few sentences, or even a few paragraphs noting:

• What you want the essay to be about
• What kinds of images you want to create as part of it
• How you’ll photograph the images
• The style, techniques, or gear you might use to create your images
• What “success” looks like when you’re done with your photo essay

You don’t have to stick to what you write down, of course. It can change during the image creation process. But fleshing your idea out on paper goes a long way in clarifying your photo essay theme and how you’ll go about creating it.

2. Create your images

Grab your camera and head outside!

As you’re photographing your essay, allow yourself some freedom to experiment. Try unusual compositions or techniques that are new to you.

Stretch your style a little, or “try on” the style of other photographers you admire who have photographed similar subjects.

Photo essays are wonderful opportunities to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and grow as a photographer.

Remember that a photo essay is a visually cohesive collection of images that make sense together. So, while you might stretch yourself into new terrain as you shoot, try to keep that approach, style, or strategy consistent.

Don’t be afraid to create lots of images. It’s great to have lots to choose from in the editing process, which comes up next.

3. Pull together your wide edit

Once you’ve created your images, pull together all the images that might make the cut. This could be as many as 40-60 images. Include anything you want to consider for the final essay in the wide edit.

From here, start weeding out images that:

• are weaker in composition or subject matter
• stand out like a sore thumb from the rest of the collection
• Are similar to other stronger images in the collection

It's helpful to review the images at thumbnail size. You make more instinctive decisions and can more easily see the body of work as a whole. If an image is strong even at thumbnail size to stand out from similar frames while also partnering well with other images in the collection, that's a good sign it's strong enough for the essay.

4. Post-process your images for a cohesive look

Now it’s time to post-process the images. Use whatever editing software you’re comfortable with to polish your images.

Again, a photo essay has a cohesive visual look. If you use presets, filters, or other tools, use them across all the images.

5. Finalize your selection

It’s time to make the tough decisions. Select only the strongest for your photo essay from your group of images.

Each image should be strong enough to stand on its own and make sense as part of the whole group.

Many photo essays range from 8-12 images. But of course, it varies based on the essay. The number of images you have in your final photo essay is up to you.

Remember, less is more. A photo essay is most powerful when each image deserves to be included.

6. Put your images in a purposeful order

Create a visual flow with your images. Decide which image is first, and build from there. Use compositions, colors, and subject matter to decide which image goes next, then next, then next in the order.

Think of it like music: notes are arranged in a way that builds energy, or slows it down, surprise listeners with a new refrain, or drop into a familiar chorus. How the notes are ordered creates emotional arcs for listeners.

How you order your images is similar.

Think of the experience a viewer will have as they look at one image, then the next, and the next. Order your images so they create the experience you want your audience to have.

7. Get feedback

The best photographers make space for feedback, even when it’s tough to hear. Your work benefits from not just hearing feedback, but listening to it and applying what you learn from it.

Show your photo essay to people who have different sensibilities or tastes. Friends, family members, fellow photographers – anyone you trust to give you honest feedback.

Watch their reactions and hear what they say about what they’re seeing. Use their feedback to guide you in the next step.

8. Refine, revise, and finalize

Let your photo essay marinate for a little while. Take a day or two away from it. Then use your freshened eyes and the feedback you received from the previous step to refine your essay.

Swap out any selects you might want to change and reorder the images if needed.

9. Add captions

Even if you don’t plan on displaying captions with your images, captioning your images is a great practice to get into. It gives context, story, and important information to each image. And, more than likely, you will want to use these captions at some point when you share your photo essay, which we dive into later in this article.

Add captions to the image files using Lightroom, Bridge, or other software programs.

Create a document, such as a Google or Word doc, with captions for each image.

In your captions, share a bit about the story behind the image, or the creation process. Add whatever makes sense to share that provides a greater understanding of the image and its purpose.

Photo essays allow you to explore deliberate style choices, such as a focus on shapes, patterns, textures, and lines. Since each photo is part of a larger essay, it encourages you to be bold with choices you might not otherwise make. 

5 Examples of amazing nature photo essays

1. “how the water shapes us” from the nature conservancy.

This gorgeous essay, crafted with the work of multiple photographers, explores the people and places within the Mississippi River basin. Through the images, we gain a sense of how the water influences life from the headwater all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Notice how each photographer is tasked with the same theme, yet approaches it with their own distinct style and vision. It is a wonderful example of the sheer level of visual variety you can have while maintaining a consistent style or theme.

View it here

2. “A Cyclist on the English Landscape” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This photo essay is a series of self-portraits by travel photographer Roff Smith while “stuck” at home during the pandemic. As he peddled the roads making portraits, the project evolved into a “celebration of traveling at home”. It’s a great example of how visually consistent you can be inside a theme while making each image completely unique.

3. “Vermont, Dressed In Snow” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This essay by aerial photographer Caleb Kenna uses a very common photo essay theme: snow. Because all images are aerial photographs, there’s a consistency to them. Yet, the compositions are utterly unique from one another. It’s a great example of keeping viewers surprised as they move from one image to the next while still maintaining a clear focus on the theme.

4. “Starling-Studded Skies” from bioGraphic Magazine

This beautiful essay is by Kathryn Cooper, a physicist trained in bioinformatics, and a talented photographer. She used a 19th century photographic technique, chronophotography, to create images that give us a look at the art and science of starling murmurations. She states: “I’m interested in the transient moments when chaos briefly changes to order, and thousands of individual bodies appear to move as one.” This essay is a great example of deep exploration of a concept using a specific photographic technique.

View it here   (Note: must be viewed on desktop)

5. “These Scrappy Photos Capture the Action-Packed World Beneath a Bird Feeder” from Audubon Magazine

This photo essay from conservation photographer Carla Rhodes explores the wildlife that takes advantage of the bounty of food waiting under bird feeders . Using remote camera photography , Rhodes gives viewers a unique ground-level perspective and captures moments that make us feel like we’re in conversation with friends in the Hundred Acre Woods. This essay is a great example of how perspective, personality, and chance can all come into play as you explore both an idea and a technique.

25 Ideas for creative photo essays you can make

The possibilities for photo essays are truly endless – from the concepts you explore to the techniques you use and styles you apply.

Choose an idea, hone your unique perspective on it, then start applying the 9 simple steps from above. 

• The life of a plant or animal (your favorite species, a species living in your yard, etc)
• The many shapes of a single species (a tree species, a bird species, etc)
• How a place changes over time
• The various moods of a place
• A conservation issue you care about
• Math in nature
• Urban nature
• Seasonal changes
• Your yard as a space for nature
• Shifting climate and its impacts
• Human impacts on environments
• Elements: Water, wind, fire, earth
• Day in the life (of a person, a place, a stream, a tree…)
• Outdoor recreation (birding, kayaking, hiking, naturalist journaling…)
• Wildlife rehabilitation
• Lunar cycles
• Sunlight and shadows
• Your local watershed
• Coexistence

As you zero in on a photo essay theme, consider two things: what most excites you about an idea, and what about it pushes you out of your comfort zone. The heady mix of joy and challenge will ensure you stick with it. 

Your photo essay is ready for the world! Decide how you’d like to make an impact with your work. You might use one or several of the options below.

1. Share it on your website

Create a gallery or a scrollytelling page on your website. This is a great way to drive traffic to your website where people can peruse your photo essay and the rest of the photography you have.

Putting it on your website and optimizing your images for SEO helps you build organic traffic and potentially be discovered by a broader audience, including photo editors.

2. Create a scrollytelling web page

If you enjoy the experience of immersive visual experiences, consider making one using your essay. And no, you don’t have to be a whiz at code to make it happen.

Shorthand helps you build web pages with scrollytelling techniques that make a big impression on viewers. Their free plan allows you to publish 3 essays or stories.

3. Create a Medium post

If you don’t have a website and want to keep things simple, a post on Medium is a great option.

Though it’s known for being a platform for bloggers, it’s also possible to add images to a post for a simple scroll.

And, because readers can discover and share posts, it’s a good place for your photos to get the attention of people who might not otherwise come across it.

4. Share it on Instagram

Instagram has changed a lot over the last couple of years, but it’s still a place for photographers to share their work thoughtfully.

There are at least 3 great ways to share your photo essay on the platform.

– Create a single post for each image. Add a caption. Publish one post per day until the full essay is on your feed. Share each post via Instagram Stories to bring more attention and interaction to your photo essay.

– Create a carousel post. You can add up 10 photos to a carousel post, so you may need to create two of them for your full photo essay. Or you might create a series of carousel posts using 3-4 images in each.

– Create a Reel featuring your images as a video.  The algorithm heavily favors reels, so turning your photo essay into a video experience can get it out to a larger audience.

I ran a “create a reel” challenge in my membership community. One member created a reel with her still images around a serious conservation issue. It gathered a ton of attention and landed her opportunities to share her message through YouTube and podcast interviews and publishing opportunities. Watch it here.

5. Exhibit it locally

Reach out to local galleries, cafes, pubs, or even the public library to see if they’re interested in hanging your photo essay for display. Many local businesses and organizations happily support the work of local artists.

6. Pitch your photo essay to publications

One of the best ways to reach an audience with your work is to get it published. Find publications that are a great fit for the theme and style of your photo essay, then pitch your essay for consideration. You gain a fantastic opportunity to share your work widely and can earn a paycheck at the same time.

Remember that if you want to get your photo essay published, you may want to hold back from sharing it publicly before you pitch it to publications.

PIN THIS FOR LATER

Jaymi Heimbuch

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What is a Photo Essay? 9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

A photo essay is a series of photographs that tell a story. Unlike a written essay, a photo essay focuses on visuals instead of words. With a photo essay, you can stretch your creative limits and explore new ways to connect with your audience. Whatever your photography skill level, you can recreate your own fun and creative photo essay.

9 Photo Essay Examples You Can Recreate

• Photowalk Photo Essay
• Transformation Photo Essay
• Day in the Life Photo Essay
• Event Photo Essay
• Building Photo Essay
• Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay
• Behind the Scenes Photo Essay
• Family Photo Essay
• Education Photo Essay

Stories are important to all of us. While some people gravitate to written stories, others are much more attuned to visual imagery. With a photo essay, you can tell a story without writing a word. Your use of composition, contrast, color, and perspective in photography will convey ideas and evoke emotions.

To explore narrative photography, you can use basic photographic equipment. You can buy a camera or even use your smartphone to get started. While lighting, lenses, and post-processing software can enhance your photos, they aren’t necessary to achieve good results.

Whether you need to complete a photo essay assignment or want to pursue one for fun or professional purposes, you can use these photo essay ideas for your photography inspiration . Once you know the answer to “what is a photo essay?” and find out how fun it is to create one, you’ll likely be motivated to continue your forays into photographic storytelling.

1 . Photowalk Photo Essay

One popular photo essay example is a photowalk. Simply put, a photowalk is time you set aside to walk around a city, town, or a natural site and take photos. Some cities even have photowalk tours led by professional photographers. On these tours, you can learn the basics about how to operate your camera, practice photography composition techniques, and understand how to look for unique shots that help tell your story.

Set aside at least two to three hours for your photowalk. Even if you’re photographing a familiar place—like your own home town—try to look at it through new eyes. Imagine yourself as a first-time visitor or pretend you’re trying to educate a tourist about the area.

Walk around slowly and look for different ways to capture the mood and energy of your location. If you’re in a city, capture wide shots of streets, close-ups of interesting features on buildings, street signs, and candid shots of people. Look for small details that give the city character and life. And try some new concepts—like reflection picture ideas—by looking for opportunities to photographs reflections in mirrored buildings, puddles, fountains, or bodies of water.

2 . Transformation Photo Essay

With a transformation photography essay, you can tell the story about change over time. One of the most popular photostory examples, a transformation essay can document a mom-to-be’s pregnancy or a child’s growth from infancy into the toddler years. But people don’t need to be the focus of a transformation essay. You can take photos of a house that is being built or an urban area undergoing revitalization.

You can also create a photo narrative to document a short-term change. Maybe you want to capture images of your growing garden or your move from one home to another. These examples of photo essays are powerful ways of telling the story of life’s changes—both large and small.

3 . Day in the Life Photo Essay

Want a unique way to tell a person’s story? Or, perhaps you want to introduce people to a career or activity. You may want to consider a day in the life essay.

With this photostory example, your narrative focuses on a specific subject for an entire day. For example, if you are photographing a farmer, you’ll want to arrive early in the morning and shadow the farmer as he or she performs daily tasks. Capture a mix of candid shots of the farmer at work and add landscapes and still life of equipment for added context. And if you are at a farm, don’t forget to get a few shots of the animals for added character, charm, or even a dose of humor. These types of photography essay examples are great practice if you are considering pursuing photojournalism. They also help you learn and improve your candid portrait skills.

4 . Event Photo Essay

Events are happening in your local area all the time, and they can make great photo essays. With a little research, you can quickly find many events that you could photograph. There may be bake sales, fundraisers, concerts, art shows, farm markets, block parties, and other non profit event ideas . You could also focus on a personal event, such as a birthday or graduation.

At most events, your primary emphasis will be on capturing candid photos of people in action. You can also capture backgrounds or objects to set the scene. For example, at a birthday party, you’ll want to take photos of the cake and presents.

For a local or community event, you can share your photos with the event organizer. Or, you may be able to post them on social media and tag the event sponsor. This is a great way to gain recognition and build your reputation as a talented photographer.

5. Building Photo Essay

Many buildings can be a compelling subject for a photographic essay. Always make sure that you have permission to enter and photograph the building. Once you do, look for interesting shots and angles that convey the personality, purpose, and history of the building. You may also be able to photograph the comings and goings of people that visit or work in the building during the day.

Some photographers love to explore and photograph abandoned buildings. With these types of photos, you can provide a window into the past. Definitely make sure you gain permission before entering an abandoned building and take caution since some can have unsafe elements and structures.

6. Historic Site or Landmark Photo Essay

Taking a series of photos of a historic site or landmark can be a great experience. You can learn to capture the same site from different angles to help portray its character and tell its story. And you can also photograph how people visit and engage with the site or landmark. Take photos at different times of day and in varied lighting to capture all its nuances and moods.

You can also use your photographic essay to help your audience understand the history of your chosen location. For example, if you want to provide perspective on the Civil War, a visit to a battleground can be meaningful. You can also visit a site when reenactors are present to share insight on how life used to be in days gone by.

7 . Behind the Scenes Photo Essay

Another fun essay idea is taking photos “behind the scenes” at an event. Maybe you can chronicle all the work that goes into a holiday festival from the early morning set-up to the late-night teardown. Think of the lead event planner as the main character of your story and build the story about him or her.

Or, you can go backstage at a drama production. Capture photos of actors and actresses as they transform their looks with costuming and makeup. Show the lead nervously pacing in the wings before taking center stage. Focus the work of stagehands, lighting designers, and makeup artists who never see the spotlight but bring a vital role in bringing the play to life.

8. Family Photo Essay

If you enjoy photographing people, why not explore photo story ideas about families and relationships? You can focus on interactions between two family members—such as a father and a daughter—or convey a message about a family as a whole.

Sometimes these type of photo essays can be all about the fun and joy of living in a close-knit family. But sometimes they can be powerful portraits of challenging social topics. Images of a family from another country can be a meaningful photo essay on immigration. You could also create a photo essay on depression by capturing families who are coping with one member’s illness.

For these projects on difficult topics, you may want to compose a photo essay with captions. These captions can feature quotes from family members or document your own observations. Although approaching hard topics isn’t easy, these types of photos can have lasting impact and value.

9. Education Photo Essay

Opportunities for education photo essays are everywhere—from small preschools to community colleges and universities. You can seek permission to take photos at public or private schools or even focus on alternative educational paths, like homeschooling.

Your education photo essay can take many forms. For example, you can design a photo essay of an experienced teacher at a high school. Take photos of him or her in action in the classroom, show quiet moments grading papers, and capture a shared laugh between colleagues in the teacher’s lounge.

Alternatively, you can focus on a specific subject—such as science and technology. Or aim to portray a specific grade level, document activities club or sport, or portray the social environment. A photo essay on food choices in the cafeteria can be thought-provoking or even funny. There are many potential directions to pursue and many great essay examples.

While education is an excellent topic for a photo essay for students, education can be a great source of inspiration for any photographer.

Why Should You Create a Photo Essay?

Ultimately, photographers are storytellers. Think of what a photographer does during a typical photo shoot. He or she will take a series of photos that helps convey the essence of the subject—whether that is a person, location, or inanimate object. For example, a family portrait session tells the story of a family—who they are, their personalities, and the closeness of their relationship.

Learning how to make a photo essay can help you become a better storyteller—and a better photographer. You’ll cultivate key photography skills that you can carry with you no matter where your photography journey leads.

If you simply want to document life’s moments on social media, you may find that a single picture doesn’t always tell the full story. Reviewing photo essay examples and experimenting with your own essay ideas can help you choose meaningful collections of photos to share with friends and family online.

Learning how to create photo essays can also help you work towards professional photography ambitions. You’ll often find that bloggers tell photographic stories. For example, think of cooking blogs that show you each step in making a recipe. Photo essays are also a mainstay of journalism. You’ll often find photo essays examples in many media outlets—everywhere from national magazines to local community newspapers. And the best travel photographers on Instagram tell great stories with their photos, too.

With a photo essay, you can explore many moods and emotions. Some of the best photo essays tell serious stories, but some are humorous, and others aim to evoke action.

You can raise awareness with a photo essay on racism or a photo essay on poverty. A photo essay on bullying can help change the social climate for students at a school. Or, you can document a fun day at the beach or an amusement park. You have control of the themes, photographic elements, and the story you want to tell.

5 Steps to Create a Photo Essay

Every photo essay will be different, but you can use a standard process. Following these five steps will guide you through every phase of your photo essay project—from brainstorming creative essay topics to creating a photo essay to share with others.

Step 1: Choose Your Photo Essay Topics

Just about any topic you can imagine can form the foundation for a photo essay. You may choose to focus on a specific event, such as a wedding, performance, or festival. Or you may want to cover a topic over a set span of time, such as documenting a child’s first year. You could also focus on a city or natural area across the seasons to tell a story of changing activities or landscapes.

Since the best photo essays convey meaning and emotion, choose a topic of interest. Your passion for the subject matter will shine through each photograph and touch your viewer’s hearts and minds.

Step 2: Conduct Upfront Research

Much of the work in a good-quality photo essay begins before you take your first photo. It’s always a good idea to do some research on your planned topic.

Imagine you’re going to take photos of a downtown area throughout the year. You should spend some time learning the history of the area. Talk with local residents and business owners and find out about planned events. With these insights, you’ll be able to plan ahead and be prepared to take photos that reflect the area’s unique personality and lifestyles.

For any topic you choose, gather information first. This may involve internet searches, library research, interviews, or spending time observing your subject.

Step 3: Storyboard Your Ideas

After you have done some research and have a good sense of the story you want to tell, you can create a storyboard. With a storyboard, you can write or sketch out the ideal pictures you want to capture to convey your message.

You can turn your storyboard into a “shot list” that you can bring with you on site. A shot list can be especially helpful when you are at a one-time event and want to capture specific shots for your photo essay. If you’ve never created a photo essay before, start with ten shot ideas. Think of each shot as a sentence in your story. And aim to make each shot evoke specific ideas or emotions.

Step 4: Capture Images

Your storyboard and shot list will be important guides to help you make the most of each shoot. Be sure to set aside enough time to capture all the shots you need—especially if you are photographing a one-time event. And allow yourself to explore your ideas using different photography composition, perspective, and color contrast techniques.

You may need to take a hundred images or more to get ten perfect ones for your photographic essay. Or, you may find that you want to add more photos to your story and expand your picture essay concept.

Also, remember to look for special unplanned, moments that help tell your story. Sometimes, spontaneous photos that aren’t on your shot list can be full of meaning. A mix of planning and flexibility almost always yields the best results.

Step 5: Edit and Organize Photos to Tell Your Story

After capturing your images, you can work on compiling your photo story. To create your photo essay, you will need to make decisions about which images portray your themes and messages. At times, this can mean setting aside beautiful images that aren’t a perfect fit. You can use your shot list and storyboard as a guide but be open to including photos that weren’t in your original plans.

You may want to use photo editing software—such as Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop— to enhance and change photographs. With these tools, you can adjust lighting and white balance, perform color corrections, crop, or perform other edits. If you have a signature photo editing style, you may want to use Photoshop Actions or Lightroom Presets to give all your photos a consistent look and feel.

You order a photo book from one of the best photo printing websites to publish your photo story. You can add them to an album on a photo sharing site, such as Flickr or Google Photos. Also, you could focus on building a website dedicated to documenting your concepts through visual photo essays. If so, you may want to use SEO for photographers to improve your website’s ranking in search engine results. You could even publish your photo essay on social media. Another thing to consider is whether you want to include text captures or simply tell your story through photographs.

Choose the medium that feels like the best space to share your photo essay ideas and vision with your audiences. You should think of your photo essay as your own personal form of art and expression when deciding where and how to publish it.

Photo Essays Can Help You Become a Better Photographer

Whatever your photography ambitions may be, learning to take a photo essay can help you grow. Even simple essay topics can help you gain skills and stretch your photographic limits. With a photo essay, you start to think about how a series of photographs work together to tell a complete story. You’ll consider how different shots work together, explore options for perspective and composition, and change the way you look at the world.

Before you start taking photos, you should review photo essay examples. You can find interesting pictures to analyze and photo story examples online, in books, or in classic publications, like Life Magazine . Don’t forget to look at news websites for photojournalism examples to broaden your perspective. This review process will help you in brainstorming simple essay topics for your first photo story and give you ideas for the future as well.

Ideas and inspiration for photo essay topics are everywhere. You can visit a park or go out into your own backyard to pursue a photo essay on nature. Or, you can focus on the day in the life of someone you admire with a photo essay of a teacher, fireman, or community leader. Buildings, events, families, and landmarks are all great subjects for concept essay topics. If you are feeling stuck coming up with ideas for essays, just set aside a few hours to walk around your city or town and take photos. This type of photowalk can be a great source of material.

You’ll soon find that advanced planning is critical to your success. Brainstorming topics, conducting research, creating a storyboard, and outlining a shot list can help ensure you capture the photos you need to tell your story. After you’ve finished shooting, you’ll need to decide where to house your photo essay. You may need to come up with photo album title ideas, write captions, and choose the best medium and layout.

Without question, creating a photo essay can be a valuable experience for any photographer. That’s true whether you’re an amateur completing a high school assignment or a pro looking to hone new skills. You can start small with an essay on a subject you know well and then move into conquering difficult ideas. Maybe you’ll want to create a photo essay on mental illness or a photo essay on climate change. Or maybe there’s another cause that is close to your heart.

Whatever your passion, you can bring it to life with a photo essay.

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How to create a photo essay

By Marissa Sapega

According to LDV Capital, there will be 45 billion cameras in the world by 2022 . The proliferation of smartphones with hi-res cameras — coupled with our obsession with documenting the mundane on social media — has led to a glut of images shared on the web .

We're talking 3.2 billion images shared online every single day.

A decade ago, observers were predicting that this would spell the end of professional photography. But as we all know from our Instagram feeds, the need for professional photography — properly produced, contextualised, and published — has never been greater.

With the emergence of next generation digital publishing platforms, we're seeing a new era for photographic essays. Many of the most powerful examples are from journalism, where immersive photos are transforming long-form journalism into a more dynamic and interactive experience.

But powerful photos — coupled with immersive, interactive digital storytelling techniques — are being increasingly incorporated in marketing and communications across multiple industries, from brands to nonprofits. 

In this guide, we'll cover:

• The main types of photo essays
• The new era of photo essays
• Tips for making thoughtful and powerful photo essays
• How to make a compelling photo essay
• We'll also provide a range of photo essay examples as we go

If you're looking for more examples, check out our roundup of photo essay examples .

Let's dive in!

What do the BBC, Tripadvisor, and Penguin have in common? They craft stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. And so can you! Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Sign up now.

Types of photo essays

There are two primary types of photo essays: thematic and narrative.

Thematic photo essays

Thematic essays focus on a topical story (like a natural disaster). One example of a great thematic essay comes from NBC News Olympics photos: Emotion runs high .

This piece encapsulates the overall gloom of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics — through a series of powerful behind-the-scenes photographs of athletes in varying levels of distress — but does not focus on a particular subject. 

Another example of a great photo story comes from the BBC. In “ From Trayvon Martin to Colin Kaepernick , they tell the story of how Black Lives Matter became entwined with sports. 

Narrative photo essays

Narrative photo essays take the story a step further and tell a specific story through images. 

One striking example is SBS's 28 Days in Afghanistan . This narrative essay documents photojournalist Andrew Quilty's time in the war-ravaged nation through stark photographs and supplementary text.

What is a photo essay in 2023?

A traditional photo essay aims to replace the written word with photographs. Done poorly, it is nothing more than series of images lumped together. Done well, though, the photojournalist or artist takes the reader on an engaging journey.

The main difference between photo essays of yore and photo essays in 2023 is the sophistication of digital publishing. With the rise of digital storytelling platforms, we're seeing a rise in truly interactive and immersive digital photo essays. 

Today, many digital photo essays include quotes and text to supplement the visuals and are formatted using interactive scrollytelling techniques. Scrollytelling is a form of visual storytelling that leverages user engagement (scrolling) to reveal images and text in an interesting and dynamic way. The interactivity compels the viewer to continue consuming the content, and creators have a wide latitude when designing the overall effect.    

Given the benefits of a more dynamic and interactive form of photo essays, it’s easy to see why they have become so popular in recent years. But as with any photo essay, creating an exceptional digital photo essays requires planning, structure, and know-how.

Let's take a closer look with ten tips for great photo essays.

Looking to learn more about interactive visual storytelling? Check out our guide, 8 tips for powerful visual storytelling .

10 tips for great photo essays

1. Create visual structure

An authentic photo essay requires visual markers to help transform a collection of images into a narrative. For example, photo chapter headings in Growing up young introduce each new girl in the story.

Similarly, in SBS’s photojournalism story — 28 days in Afghanistan , mentioned above — each dated header delineates a part of the story, providing an easy-to-follow chronological structure and pace.

Daniel Boud intersperses his own thoughts in between a haunting series of photographs of the iconic Sydney Opera House as it underwent a restoration during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in The Sydney Opera House at Rest .

Text can add depth to the photo essay—but take care where you add it. It should support and enhance the final product, not overshadow it.

2. Make it interactive

In 2023, the best photo essays are interactive. 

One great example of an interactive photo essay is WaterAid’s essay, Water and Climate . This photo essay highlights the people climate change has impacted most brutally, including a video, stark close-up photography, and graphics to get its point across. 

The photo essay uses minimal text, preferring to allow the images to speak for themselves. As a user scrolls, it exposes them to more content. Each visual and supplemental text further immerses the viewer into the story until the end, where they encounter a call to action to join WaterAid in helping those in need.

Nonprofits like WaterAid often use interactive photo essays to compel people to act , because they work. Half the battle of convincing someone to part with their money is creating an emotional connection with them—something a photo essay does particularly well.

3. Produce more content than you need

Have you ever seen how much film footage ends up on the cutting room floor for the average movie (known as the shooting ratio)? It’s a lot.   

Why is this? First, filmmakers know that many of the shots they take will be either poor-quality or simply not up to their exacting standards. Second, if a director included all the footage they took throughout the entire production in the final product, her movie would be a bloated mess.

The editor’s job is to strip away the dead weight to reveal a clean, refined, final product that keeps viewers raptly engaged. However, an editor may struggle to do his job if the director has not provided enough usable footage.

The same principles apply to creating an exceptional photo essay. Always assemble more visuals and content than you think you’ll need so you can use the cream of the crop for the final product. Shedding content may be difficult, but it’s necessary, so be prepared to edit your piece without mercy.

Publishing photos on the web, but confused about the range of file formats? Check out our guide to file formats .

4. Use only the best photos

A photo essay is not an excuse to throw together all the imagery you have. Just like any good story, it needs a focused and compelling narrative that keeps things connected. Each image needs to bring something to the table. 

Remember that photo quality plays a significant role in the overall caliber of a photo essay. If your iPhone isn’t doing your subject justice, don’t be afraid to pull in a professional to make your work come alive.

A great example of this comes from Sky Sports. In their photo essay, Pictured: Diego Maradona , they had to be ruthless when deciding upon the imagery to include.

They no doubt had hundreds — perhaps thousands — of photos to choose from from the many photo shoots in Maradona's life. Yet they knew that each one had to be poignant and compelling in its own way. 

5. Don’t be afraid to edit your photos

Not everyone can be Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz. Happily, with the readily available photo-editing software like Photoshop and high-quality cameras on every smartphone, you don’t need to be. Do your best to acquire top-quality photos, but don’t be timid about improving them!

Thanks to heavy exposure to advertising, viewers today now expect doctored images. Whether you’re refining a photo for a flawless finish or adding a touch of grittiness, use this expectation to your advantage. Dial up the contrast, crop out unnecessary elements, and use filters if they suit your needs.

6. Visit the archives

With so many gleaming, airbrushed-to-perfection photographs online today, exposure to imagery that’s not polished within an inch of its life can be a refreshing change. 

For example, take a look at Mancity’s My Debut Trevor Francis (v Stoke 1981) , which exclusively uses archival images. Not only was this a necessity (the focus was on a decades-old football match), but it lent the entire piece a tattered legitimacy. You wouldn’t expect “Insta-worthy” images because that’s not the experience the author is trying to convey.

7. Storyboard before building

You wouldn’t build a house without drafting a blueprint, would you? (Well, not unless you weren’t too invested in the end-product.) Much like a blueprint, a storyboard helps you convert the vision inside your head into a concrete plan for construction. It can also contribute to your shot list for your photography project. 

Storyboarding forces you to take a step back and evaluate how each element fits into the larger narrative. You may find that half your content is no longer necessary, and that’s okay. It may seem like a barrier to “getting to the fun part” of adding fancy flourishes and creative details, but it’s a critical step for building a good photo essay that genuinely influences viewers.

8. Experiment!

While there are certainly best practices to follow when creating a photo essay, no “one true path” will culminate in perfection every time. Photo essays are a way to express a story; such art is not limited to a template or cookie-cutter outputs.

So, mix it up! Test out different photos, filter effects, text, quotes, and visuals. Pretend you’re playing with a Rubik’s cube when you’re storyboarding and shuffle the content around with abandon. There is no right way to draft a photo essay, and you’ll never settle on one that you believe best conveys your story without a bit of experimentation. (Of course, your first iteration may end up being your best, but at least this way you won’t have any doubts.)

9. Combine data and maps

Adding hard metrics and maps to a photo essay can help support a narrative in ways that photographs can’t. In this essay on segregation in Detroit , NBC included interactive maps of the city that underscored the severity of Detroit’s redlining policy. 

These maps drive home this multimedia photo essay’s primary takeaway: Detroit’s enforced segregation has resulted in almost a century of lower quality of life for its black residents.

10. Get inspired

No matter how compelling the vision in your head is, you can still benefit from a little inspiration. If you're looking for photo essay ideas, consider: 

• Focusing on a single subject for a day (known as a day in the life photo essay).
• Document local events, such as art shows, protests, or community gatherings — this is an endless source of photo essay topics.
• Capture social issues from your local area.
• Start a photo series, in which you document the same specific subject over a period of time.
• Research the great photo essayists from history, such as W. Eugene Smith, and James Nachtwey.
• Dive into the archives of the great photo essay magazines, such as National Geographic and Life Magazine.
• Do some research on your potential subject. This will help you formulate different angles from which to approach your photo essay.
• Sign up to Shorthand's newsletter , which rounds up the best visual stories on the web every other week. 

Now, let's dive into how to make a stunning photo essay using Shorthand.

How to make a stunning digital photo essay

Traditionally, photo essays on the web were little more than a series of images pasted into a blog post. Because most blogs are structured primarily for words, these photos essays didn't do justice to their source media. 

However, as web browsers became more powerful and bandwidth increased, a range of content platforms — including no-code digital storytelling platforms like Shorthand — have evolved to make it easier to create stunning visual stories. We've linked to many of these in this guide. 

In this section, we're going to run through how to make a photo essay using Shorthand. If you're not a Shorthand customer, you can sign up here and follow along.

1. Create a new story

In your Shorthand dashboard, click 'New Story.' If you'd like, you can choose from any of our templates to help you get started. For now, though, we're going to start with a blank canvas.

The template chooser

2. Add your title image

Every photo essay needs a stunning title image to hook the reader. Depending on what kind of photo essay you're creating, this could be a photo of the subject or theme of the piece. You can also choose to add a title, subtitle, and author. 

3. Add a text section

Every photo essay needs a written introduction, to help contextualise the images that follow. Simply click 'New Section' and 'Text', before pasting in your introductory copy.

Adding a Text section.

4. Add your first photo

Now it's time to add the first photo in your essay. Simply click 'New Section' and 'Media.' In photo essays, hierarchy is critical, so make sure you've thought about which photo is most appropriate at the top of your essay. In Shorthand, your photo will appear in all its  full-screen glory.

Image in a 'Media' section.

5. Add a Reveal section

You also have the option of adding a 'Reveal' section, which allows you to add text that floats over your images. This text can act as a commentary or de facto caption for each photo in your essay.

Simply click 'New Section' and 'Reveal.' You'll be able to also upload a version of the image for mobile, and set focus areas to make sure the most important parts of your image are shown.

A 'Reveal' section with accompanying text box.

6. Add transition effects

Depending on the nature of your photo essay, you may wish to add transition effects between some images. A ‘Reveal’ section is the best way to achieve this. You'll have the option of choosing from several types of transitions that occur as your reader scrolls from one full-screen image to the next, and each image can have its own text box, too.

Testing a Reveal section in the Shorthand editor

7. Add Scrollmation effects

If you want to use images in concert with large amounts of text, then consider using Shorthand's Scrollmation feature. This allows you to transition through a range of images as the reader scrolls down a column of text. 

To do this — you guessed it — simply click 'New Section' and 'Scrollmation' or 'Background Scrollmation.' 

The difference between the two is simple: In a Scrollmation section, the text appears in a column beside your images, while in a Background Scrollmation section,  images fill the screen and the text column appears over the images. A sequence of related images can give the effect of animation triggered by the reader’s scrolling.

A Scrollmation section within the editor

Background Scrollmation in the editor

8. Add a Media Gallery

If you have many different images, and want to create a mosaic effect in your essay, then you can use a media gallery. To do this, simply click 'New Section' and 'Media Gallery.' 

You can then upload your images, and experiment with their size and arrangement to achieve your intended effect.

Creating a Media Gallery section in the editor

9. Preview your story

Photo essays — more than many other genres of content on the web — can run into problems with different screen sizes. Before you publish, make sure you test your story using Shorthand's preview option. 

You'll be able to see what your story looks like on desktop, mobile, and tablet viewports, and make adjustments as needed. You can also share your preview link with collaborators, and get pre-publication feedback and quality-assurance.

Story previews in the editor, simulating a phone and iPad.

10. Publish 🚀

The final step is to publish your essay to the world! You now have an immersive, potentially interactive photo essay — without writing a line of code. 

Contemporary photo essays are creative endeavours rife with opportunities for interactivity. Organisations and artists alike use them as modern, impactful vehicles to convey powerful stories. Try creating one for yourself using Shorthand for free today!

Publish your first story free with Shorthand

Craft sumptuous content at speed. No code required.

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How to Make a Photo Essay

Last Updated: September 27, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Heather Gallagher . Heather Gallagher is a Photojournalist & Photographer based in Austin, Texas. She runs her own photography studio named "Heather Gallagher Photography" which was voted Austin's Best Family Photographer and top 3 Birth Photographers in 2017, 2018, and 2019. Heather specializes in family Photojournalism and has over 15 years of experience documenting individuals, families, and businesses all over the world. Her clients include Delta Airlines, Oracle, Texas Monthly, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post and The Austin American Statesman. She is a member of the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers (IAPBP). There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 286,968 times.

Photo essays are an increasingly popular medium for journalists, bloggers, and advertisers alike. Whether you’re trying to show the emotional impact of a current news story or share your hobby with friends and family, images can capture your topic in a personal, emotional, and interesting way. Creating a photo essay can be as easy as choosing a topic, getting your images, and organizing the essay.

Things You Should Know

• Reflect long and hard on your topic, considering your audience, current events, and whether to go for a thematic or narrative approach.
• Create an outline, including your focus image, establishing shot, clincher, and other image details.
• When you finally take your photos, remember to take more photos than you think you need and don't be afraid to let the project change as you create it.

Finding Your Topic

• Offer a photo essay of your place of business as a training tool.
• Use a photo essay about your business as a sales or social tool by publishing it on your website or social media page.
• Create a how to photo essay to help others learn about your hobby, so they can take it up as well. [4] X Research source

• Thematic subjects are big ideas including things like local gun laws, at-risk youth, or welcoming home soldiers.
• Narrative essays can include a day in the life, how to tutorials, or progression series that show changes over time such as tracking a building project.
• If you have been given a commission or specific publication to work with, you may need to choose a topic that will fit a thematic or narrative approach as outlined by the publication. Make sure you are aware of any publication guidelines in advance.

Organizing Your Shoot

• Consider how difficult it will be to get permission to photograph your subjects. If you already have relationships established, it will be easier. If not, allow for extra time to get permission and/or waivers.
• Schools, daycares, and other places with kids typically have more regulations on who can be photographed and for what purposes. You’ll usually need to get parental approval, in addition to permission from those in charge. [7] X Research source

• Consider doing interviews with people involved prior to the shoot. Ask things like, “What’s the most interesting thing you do during this event?” or “How long have you been involved with this organization?”
• These interviews are also a great opportunity to ask for permission and get waivers.
• If you’re going to visit a job site, charitable event, or other large group activity, ask the person or persons in charge to explain what you’re doing to everyone before you arrive. [8] X Research source

Capturing Your Images

• Many new photographers stay away from high ISO shots because they allow more light through producing a “busy” image. However, these images are often easier to edit later as there’s more information to work with. [11] X Research source
• If it’s very bright in your location or you’ve set up artificial lighting, a low ISO is likely adequate, For darker areas, you’ll likely need to use a higher ISO.
• If you need one second to capture an image with a base ISO of 100, you’ll need one eighth of a second to capture with an ISO of 800. [13] X Research source

• Even snapping candid shots, which you may need to capture quickly, take a few moments to think about how objects are placed to make the most impact.
• Always think about how the main subject’s surroundings play into the overall image, and try to create different levels and points of interest.
• You can change composition as part of the editing process in some cases, so if you can’t line up the shot just right, don’t let it deter you from capturing the image you want. [14] X Research source

Organizing the Essay

• If you’re doing a day in the life photo essay about a frustrated person working in an office, an image of that person struggling to open the front door against the wind might be an apt focus shot.
• If your essay is about the process of building a home, your focus image may be something like a contractor and architect looking at blue prints with the framed up home in the background.
• If your essay is about a family reunion, the focus image may be a funny shot of the whole family making faces, pretending to be fighting, or a serious photo of the family posed together. Capture whatever seems natural for the family. [18] X Research source

• Regardless of essay type, you’ll need a focus image to grab attention.
• Use an overall shot to give context to your essay. Where is it, when is it happening, who’s involved, what’s going on, and why should someone be interested? The five “W’s” of journalism are a great way to determine what your overall shot should capture.
• Find your final image. This should be something provocative that asks your viewer to think about the topic.
• Between the focus and overall shot and ending image, include a series of images that move the viewer from the lead-in shots to its result. Use images that build in intensity or draw the viewers further into the essay.

• If the images aren’t telling the story, ask your friends to look at your other photos and ask, “I wanted this image to make this point. You got a different idea. Would any of these images make this point to you more clearly?”
• If the others like the images you’ve chosen, you may still want to ask them to look at your other photos and tell you if they think any of the images you didn’t include should be added in. They may see something you missed. [20] X Research source

• If you're commissioned to add photos to an essay, you should make sure images reflect the written word, but also add emotion and context the writing could not capture. For example, an essay on poverty may include an image of a child and parent living on the street could capture more emotional context.
• Captions should only include information the viewer could not derive from the photo itself. For instance, you can include a date, the subject’s name, or a statistic relevant to your subject in the caption.
• If you choose not to have any text or just a title and some introductory and/or closing words, make sure you convey all necessary information succinctly. [21] X Research source

Expert Q&A

• Be creative with your topics. However, something as simple as "things I like" will suffice so long as you stay creative. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Make sure you're familiar with your camera. It will make the photo composition a lot easier. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Don't get discouraged. It may take several tries to get the desired results in your photos. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://digital-photography-school.com/5-photo-essay-tips/
• ↑ Heather Gallagher. Professional Photojournalist & Photographer. Expert Interview. 8 April 2020.
• ↑ http://improvephotography.com/30816/10-ideas-creative-photo-essays/
• ↑ http://www.apogeephoto.com/how-to-create-a-photo-essay/
• ↑ https://petapixel.com/how-to-create-a-photo-essay/
• ↑ http://photo.journalism.cuny.edu/week-5/
• ↑ http://clickitupanotch.com/2010/12/creating-a-photo-essay/
• ↑ https://photographylife.com/what-is-iso-in-photography
• ↑ https://wiredimpact.com/blog/how-to-make-a-photo-essay-nonprofit/
• ↑ http://digital-photography-school.com/5-tips-for-creating-a-photo-essay-with-a-purpose/
• ↑ https://www.format.com/magazine/resources/photography/how-to-make-photo-essay-examples

About This Article

To make a photo essay, start by selecting a subject that is easy to capture and that inspires you, like a friend or a family pet. Then, decide if you want to present your photo essay as thematic, which shows specific examples of a big idea, or narrative, with a beginning, middle, and end. Next, create an outline of your essay to determine which photos you’ll need, like an establishing shot. Finally, take your photos, select which images you want to use in your essay, and organize them according to your theme before adding text to explain the essay. To learn how to capture the best images, keep scrolling! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to create an outstanding Photo Essay

If you are working on your photo essay and would wish to know how to create a successful one, we have some tips, tricks, and techniques outlined in this article. With the sophistication of digital publishing, you need to be on your A-game when creating digital photos that tell a story.

As a custom essay writing service , our ultimate goal in this article is to guide you on creating a photo essay without straining. We like it when writing, and creativity is fun altogether. Therefore, we have outlined examples, classifications, and a framework that you can use when creating your photo essay.

This article also bears the definition of what a photo essay is. And although you could use this as a professional or a student, you can pay someone to do your essay on our website. When you do so, a polished essay writer will work with you in creating a good photo essay,

We have creatives with expertise, a knack for experimentation, critical thinking and creativity, and an insatiable urge to produce top content. If it sounds like you could use our help, let us know the best way we can assist you in creating a perfect photography essay.

If, however, all you need is insights to point you in the right direction, here is how to create a good photo essay without straining. Let’s explore!

What is a Photo Essay?

Visual storytelling appeals to everyone who has a sense of sight.

Unlike your typical essay in college, a photo essay is a project where you present a series of photographs or images to tell a story, share a narrative, or push a theme/agenda. Thus, a photo essay facilitates picture-led storytelling , which is a creative innovation in photojournalism.

It is also known as a photographic or picture essay. A great photo essay powerfully evokes emotions and appeals to the understanding of its intended audience without using words or with minimal words alongside the series of images.

A perfectly-created photo essay narrates a story using many photographs that take the viewer along your narrative journey. Indeed, it proves that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, since there are many pictures/images, you could say a photo essay is rich in words, flavor, and content, yet it does not have words.

Talking of photo essays, Ansel Adams is one of the revered and famous photo essayists. Other photo essayists include James Nachtwey, Eugene Smith, and Nancy Borowick .

How to Create a Photo Essay in a step-by-step format

Here is a step-by-step approach to follow to successfully create a compelling and engaging photo essay:

Step 1 – Do your Research

If you are to create an attractive and relevant photo essay, begin by researching the best framework to adopt. Look at what people are doing out there and find out how creatively you can do it better. There are inexhaustible ideas and concepts that you can explore when writing a photo essay. If you’ve not chosen a topic, thorough research can help you decide on a topic and handle it well.

Step 2 - Choose a theme for your photo essay

With the research, you can already identify a specific theme or narrative for your picture essay. Therefore, highlight the theme or narrative, write some notes about the direction you will tackle and how you will reach and satisfy your audience.

Step 2 – Choose a topic that aligns with the theme

Following the findings from your research, choose a great topic. You are not that lucky photo essayist who opportunistically happens upon a story and turns it into a brilliant photo essay. Therefore, you should choose an attractive, reasonable, short, and memorable topic. You are free to select any topic that interests you and one that you find fun to work on. Your chosen theme or narrative can help define the topic for your photo essay.

Step 3 – Pick your subjects

With the theme/narrative and the topic, you can then choose your subjects. These are the people, things, sceneries, or places of central focus in your photography essay.  

The subjects are the ones that give your photo essay a voice, strengthen your narrative, and engage the audience.

Step 4 – Select your top images

Define the appropriate number of images that you intend to use when telling the story. For example, if you intend to leave the audience under suspense, choose which images to use and their order of appearance.  Your photo essay project does not have to use all your images but the best.

The best way to integrate your theme, narrative, and subjects is to create a storyboard that helps you decide how to tell the story. Then, when you lay your ideas out, a storyboard helps you focus on what is essential, especially when you have little control over a given subject.

Step 5 – ask for insights and input from others

After creating the storyboard, choosing the photos, and writing a narrative or theme statement, you can share it with someone knowledgeable for critique. You should also invite views and comments from another person. Ensure that you give the entire photo cache to the person so that they can choose, then compare with your best photos and tweak your choice accordingly.

Step 6 – Write the captions and text

With everything set, write the accompanying content for your photo essay. As well, make sure you caption each photo to enhance your visual narrative. Nothing is cast in stone here because you can also drop using image captions. You can experiment with lighting, tone, color, composition, angles, and location so that the narrative flows. Also, don’t forget to create introductory messages and closing messages. You need to have your signature introductory and closing images well-decided.

Step 7 – Edit your work

Now that you have created a photo essay, it is now time to edit everything. You can ask for help or rest and do it when you are energetic and objective. If you want a skilled essay writer to write you an excellent narrative to post alongside your photo essay, you can always trust our essay website.  We can also edit the narrative to maintain a good flow.

Step 8 – Publish/submit your work

If everything else is okay, convert the photo essay to the correct format and submit or publish it. Remember, photo essays can be a portion of a webpage, a webpage, a document, fashion publication, photo editorial, collage of images, or mixed media.

Helpful Tips when compiling your Photographic Essay

If you are on track to become a photo essayist, you need to grasp the most critical photo essaying tips, techniques, and tricks. Here is some best advice you could use to find a subject for your photo essay.

1. Try to tell a diverse and confident story

When you get out there to tell a story, make sure you do it most awesomely. Understand your target audience, do anything that will resonate with their needs, appeal to their emotions, logic, and thoughts, and leave them musing over your narrative. It is, therefore, vital that you consider what your key message will be and be confident when handling it in your photo essay.

2.Storyboard before building

Architects, surgeons, artists, engineers, you name the profession, all begin with either a sketch, blueprint or a plan to visualize the entire concept or creation before its actualization. In the real of photo essays, you have to be invested right from the beginning. Therefore, you need to create a storyboard that helps you to convert your vision, abstract thoughts, and ideas to a concrete plan that you can execute to succeed in your project. A storyboard also doubles as a shortlist for your photography project.

When storyboarding, you will notice that you take an outsider view, which helps you evaluate how every element fits into the larger picture – your narrative/theme. When doing it, you can discard otherwise burdensome but irrelevant content, which saves you time and leaves you to focus more.

Storyboarding is a critical, creative step when building a perfect photo essay as it ensures the flow to your viewers.

3. Have a visual structure

A contemporary photo essay follows a simple or basic framework that gives your theme direction and scope. Therefore, having a visual structure, marker, or framework helps you transform the photo series into a narrative. For instance, this Growing up young photo essay published in the BBC chooses to have quotes from the subjects running alongside the photos. Likewise, the picture essay done by photojournalist Stefanie Glinski titled  One Month in Kabul Under Taliban rule – a photo essay has narrative and captions to further illustrate the themes, content, and narratives.

4. Have a variety of images

To write an exceptional photo essay, ensure that you have as many photos or images as possible. Assemble as much as you think you will need for the project, then use your ruthless photo editing skills to pick the best photos.

Although shedding content hurts, it’s the only best way to achieve the best piece. It is also better to be in a dilemma of which photos to use than wish that you included a specific shot. Having multiple shots ensures that everything is captured. Then compiling your photo series becomes easier.

5. Edit your photos well

When editing, do it ruthlessly. While you cannot be Annie Leibovitz, Stefanie Glinski, or Ansel Adams, you certainly have to up your game to be at par with them. You can either use a professional editor. Alternatively, you can edit your photos using Photoshop, Illustrator, or other image-editing software. Whatever you choose your struggle to be, ensure that you end up with high-quality photos that make sense to your theme or narrative. If you have to refine an image to remove blemish or flaws, use it as long as it ends up fine. Make sure that the focus of each photo is visible and that unwanted areas are cropped out. If you are editing on your own, edit the photos a few days after the shoot to have an objective mind when doing it.

6. Choose the top 10 images

You are not just going to lazily throw images and words all over a structure and have it for the best photo essay out there. Instead, you need to select quality photos that will tell your narrative. Be keen enough to ensure that any photo that makes it to the top 10 list is compelling and poignant. If you notice that you don’t have good equipment to produce or capture quality photos, don’t be afraid to pull in a professional photographer.

7. Use outside input to perfect your choice

When working on a photo essay project, you are not necessarily an island. The photo essayists we’ve mentioned work with teams. You equally need to get a trusted, visually active, and sophisticated individual, professional, or friend to help you.

Have them look at the photos you took and ask them to choose the best. As well, provide them with a written description of your narrative and ask them to select their 10 best photos.

Compare their choice with yours and if they differ, make a point of asking the reason. Listen keenly and tweak your narrative and choice as they most likely reflect what an audience would perceive from the photo essay.

8. Select the best photos from the best

Based on the reasons from your external source (friend, editor, or photographer), select the 10 best photographs to use in telling your story. As well, change the narration if there is a need to tweak it.

9. Write reasonable captions

For your final choice of 10 images, write a befitting caption that will help to enhance your visual narrative. You need to be concise, brief, and clear. If the photos have a strong or exciting background story you wish to run, have the narrative written as content alongside the photos.

However, if you feel like the images can stand alone without captions, don’t beat yourself over it; leave them out. After all, using captions is not a must.

Look at this example of Black Lives Matter Photo Essay (Link to external site).

Apart from the caption, you can add text that contains data, complex metrics, or maps to support your narrative. Using maps can help drive the point home.

10. Focus on the details

Yes, the devil is always in the details. When you eventually display your photo essay to an audience, everybody analyzes it their way. However, when you capture the details, you will take care of each perspective, judgment, and reasoning from your audience. Ensure that you place everything in context and that everything is up to date.

11. Make it fun

Unlike college essays that come with challenges, creating a photo essay should be fun. Therefore, enjoy every bit of the project. Doing so helps you to step up your game, inspire creativity, and relaxes your mind. There is nothing creative and innovative you cannot do in a photo essay with a let loose sort of spirit.

12. Set the scene

When telling a story through photography, you are equally writing your story. Therefore, ensure that you set a scene to capture the moment that appeals to your audience.

For the events that you have no control over, try as much as possible to take photos that match your narrative or theme.

13. Experiment more when taking photos

There is no single bullet to creating an outstanding photo essay. To achieve perfection, let your photo essay express your story in the best way it can. Therefore, you need to test filter effects, use fonts, adjust the visuals, check the contrast, adjust color, hue, and feel, and crop your photos well. With experimentation comes creativity and innovativeness, which birth perfection.

Classification of Photo Essays

In terms of classification, there are two general classes of photo essays where all the genres of photo essays fall. These classes are narrative and thematic.

1. Narrative Photo Essays

A narrative photo essay, as the name suggests, tells a specific story. But, mainly, these types of photo essays tend to tell a peculiar and more direct story.

Unlike thematic photo essays, narrative photo essays give less freedom to the photo essayist. The use of text is to have some sense of completion to the story.

For instance, the 28 Days in Afghanistan by Andrew Quilty published in the SBS is a narrative photo essay that documents the photographer’s experience in the war-torn nation using both text and unadulterated photos.

The picture essay by photojournalist Stefanie Glinski titled  One Month in Kabul Under Taliban rule – a photo essay also falls under this category as it highlights her one-month encounter in Kabul.

2. Thematic photo Essays

Thematic photo essays are topic-specific. For example, they can be on politics, pollution, police brutality, global pandemic, poverty, crime, etc.

You have the freedom of choosing the subjects, location, and you do not necessarily have to incorporate text.

An example of a thematic photo essay is the “ They call us bewitched ” picture essay published in the Guardian. We also bumped into the Olympics Photos: Emotion runs high by the NBC News, which we find as an excellent thematic photo essay. Next, look at this Hurricane Katrina photo essay. It is thematic in the sense that it focuses on a natural disaster. Finally, if you want more examples, this photo essay titled “ From Trayvon Martin to Colin Kaepernick ” details the theme of Black Lives Matter/ police brutality.

Typical Photo Essay Examples/Genres to inspire your creativity

• The daily life photo essay – A Day-in-the-life photo essay tells a story about the day-to-day life of a given subject. It could be a lawyer, president, celebrity, farmer, industrialist, pope, student, etc. most of these photographic essays evoke emotions and help the audience enter into the subject's world.
• Transitioning through life photo essay – These are essays that detail photos of how people transform through life. It can be a photo of a celebrity, president, farmer, or famous person since they were young to date.
• Special events photo essays – As the name suggests, these are photo essays on special events, festivities, and occurrences. The events can be weddings, burials, art exhibitions, car shows, auction events, or celebrations. They have very elaborate and relatable background objects that connect to the main idea.
• Family photo essays – These can be photo essays on family members. You can include photos that show how the family has grown or detailing the family tree. They can also be family business photos that detail the leaders assigned roles to family businesses.
• Protest photo essays – These are thematic photo essays that detail how protests occurred and paint a clear picture of the theme of such protests as the Black Lives Matter protests. When creating a protest photo essay, you should have information about the particular protest. Focus on incidents and protests that occurred in history.
• Sports photo essays – Sports essays can be on sports events such as Olympics, Wimbledon, football leagues, or about sportsmen and women. For instance, the Skysports’ picture essay on Diego Maradona titled Diego Maradona: Images of a football Icon .
• Medical Photo Essays – Organizations such as WHO , Universities , or CDC have various examples of medical photo essays. These visual illustrations focus on medical research, medical practice, diseases, and medical breakthroughs.
• Scientific Photo Essays – Like medical essays, these photo essays detail scientific encounters, breakthroughs, inventions, etc.
• Celebrity photo essays – You can create a photo essay on a celebrity.
• Political photo essays are photo essays that capture and narrate political events, history, and news in a series of photographs and narratives. It could be about leftist and rightist politics or geopolitics as well as policy-making.
• War photo essays – Captures the critical and significant elements of conflict, war, and peace. There are many samples online.
• Timelapse photo essays – These are transformational photo essays that capture the changes of a subject through time. They might take longer to develop and can be on buildings, estates, cities, trees, or landscapes.
• Relationship photo essays – This photo essay genre captures the interaction between people, families, and loved ones. It is the most common assignment in journalism class. It offers an excellent chance to capture emotions like love, family, and friendship.
• Poverty photo essays – This genre of photo essays captures poverty from the standpoint of the subject. They can contain infrastructure, housing, amenities, food, water, etc. They are very emotional and can use narratives. They are the same as drought photo essays that capture how the drought has ravaged a geographic region of interest.
• City photo essays – These are photographic essays that capture a city's feel, life, and pleasures. They are thematic in nature and allow you to focus on specific areas, moods, and feeling that such places evoke.
• Education photo essays – Details issues in education. For instance, it can be a photo essay showing the disparity in access, challenges in education, or infrastructure in education. An example is The Many Faces of Learning, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Another one is Embracing Education , published by the Lutheran World Federation.

As long as you can think of any topic, there is always a picture or photo essay genre where it can fall under. Remember, you can be asked to create a photo essay on a Word Document or PDF for class, which is where you get the chance to display your prowess and creativity.

Common Photo Essay Examples

Here are the famous photo essays that you can draw inspiration from:

• Various American Natural Sites by Ansel Adams
• “Everyday” by Noah Kalina
• “Signed, X” by Kate Ryan 
• “The Vietnam War” by Philip Jones Griffiths
• “The Great Depression” by Dorothea Lange

Structure/Anatomy of a Photo Essay

Here is a blueprint or skeleton of how a basic photo essay can look like

Introductory text/content

This is where you type the text that explains or introduces the photo essay to your audience.

Signature Image

This is the strongest image that has a visual impact on the story you are running. It should be an image that invites the viewers to your story to be interested in looking further. In simple terms, this is your window, attention grabber, or icon; make it count.

This is the picture of a key player or the main subject of your story. You must ensure that the foreground and background elements reinforce the theme or narrative.

Where the subject is caught in real moments, such as in environmental portraits, is reportedly more compelling. You can use a series of posed portraits as well.

Overall wider view

This is the photograph that gives the viewers a sense of the place or part of the place where the story happens. You use such images to create a scene. It can also be a series of detailed images bundled together to set the scene.

Here, you need to follow up with a photograph that explains the finer details. The photo can be abstract but eye-catching in the sense that it draws the attention of the audience. It should be an image that reveals to the audience some aspect that is otherwise missed in a wider shot. You are allowed to use series of small detail photos as a mosaic in one image .

When defining an action, look for a photograph that shows the main theme in your story. For instance, if it is a Black Lives Matter protest, focus on a photo that captures banners, police, and protesters.  Specifically, focus on the most poignant or dramatic images that capture people interacting with one another. You can as well capture gestures or moments that amplify the visual narrative you want to communicate.

Closing Photo and text

This is the powerful closing photograph that lets your audience ponder more about your visual narrative. You can follow it with a text highlighting the thoughts you want the audience to reason with as they come to the end of your photo essay.

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Teaching the Photo Essay

A picture is worth 1,000 words.

Your students, if they’re anything like mine, love to communicate through images—photos on Instagram , GIFs shared in a text, photo stories on Snapchat. And yet, so much of our conversation in school revolves around words. Understanding text is critical to students’ success now and in the future. But do we also help students identify, read and understand images in order to become literate in the visual language that is all around us? The photo essay can be a great middle or high school assignment that will have strong appeal and grow your students’ writing skills.

What Is a Photo Essay?

For those who aren’t familiar with the term “photo essay,” have no fear. A photo essay, in its simplest form, is a series of pictures that evokes an emotion, presents an idea or helps tell a story. You’ve been exposed to photo essays for your entire life—possibly without even knowing it. For example, you may have seen Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother:

An iconic image of the Great Depression, this picture, along with Lange’s other gripping photos, helped Americans better understand the effects of poverty in California as well as across the nation. Migrant Mother is one of countless photographs that helped persuade, influence or engage viewers in ways that text alone could not.

Photo essays can feature text through articles and descriptions, or they can stand alone with simple captions to give context. The versatility of photo essays has helped the medium become a part of our culture for centuries, from the American Civil War to modern environmental disasters like the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. This versatility is also what makes the photo essay a great educational asset in classrooms today; teachers can use them in any content area. Math students can use them to show a geometric concept in real life. Science students can document a chemistry process at home. Auto students can photograph the technique—and joys and frustrations—of learning a new procedure.

So, where does a teacher begin? Read further for tips and ideas for making photo essays a part of your teaching toolbox.

Start With Photos

Introducing photo essays as a means of changing lives and changing society can hook student interest in the medium. Begin by simply showing pictures and letting students discuss their reactions. Consider this famous photo of the field at Antietam during the Civil War. Share some of the photos from this collection from CNN of 25 of the Most Iconic Photograph s or this list of 50 Influential Photographs That Changed Our World .

Each of these photographs stirs emotion and sends our minds searching for answers. As a warm-up assignment or series of assignments, have students choose (or assign randomly) a photograph to write about. What’s the story? Why did this happen? Who was involved?

DIY Photographs

Before giving a formal photo essay assignment, give students an opportunity to practice and receive feedback. Consider presenting students with several open-ended, ungraded challenges like “For class tomorrow, take a photo that depicts ‘Struggle.’” Other possible photo topics: chaos, frustration, friendship, school. Have students email you their photo homework and share it as a slideshow. Talk about the images. Do they convey the theme?

You can give examples or suggestions; however, giving too many examples and requirements can narrow students’ creativity. The purpose of this trial run is to generate conversation and introduce students to thinking like photographers, so don’t worry if the photos aren’t what you had in mind; it’s about getting feedback on what the student had in mind.

Technique 101

Even though the goal of a photo essay is to influence and create discussion, there is still benefit in giving students a crash course on simple photography concepts. Don’t feel like you have to teach a master-level course on dark-room development. Even a simple overview on the “Rule of Thirds” and the importance of perspective can be enough to help students create intentional, visually stirring photographs.

You can teach these ideas directly or have students do the work by researching on their own. They have most likely seen hundreds of movies, advertisements and photos, so these lessons are simply labeling what they’ve already experienced. Having some knowledge of composition will not only help students improve their visual literacy, it will also help empower them to take photos of their own.

Choose Your Purpose

Are students telling their own stories of their neighborhoods or their families? Are they addressing a social issue or making an argument through their images and text? A photo essay could be a great assignment in science to document a process or focus on nature.

If you are just getting started, start out small: Have students create a short photo essay (two to five images) to present a topic, process or idea you have been focusing on in class. Here’s a Photo Essay Planning Guide to share with your students.

With pictures becoming a dominant medium in our image-filled world, it’s not a question of if we should give students practice and feedback with visual literacy, it’s a question of how . Photo essays are a simple, engaging way to start. So, what’s your plan?

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Definition of photo-essay

Word history.

1944, in the meaning defined above

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Definition of 'photo essay'

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• 33 Writing Photo Essays

Start-Up Activity

Share appropriate magazines that include photos and text, such as National Geographic or Life . Have students page through the magazines, looking for photos that draw their attention. Ask what they like about the photos. Ask what they can learn from the photos. Ask them to close their eyes and imagine the magazine with no photos, just words.

Lead a discussion about the power of pictures. Help students understand that when they connect words and photos, they can reach their audience in all new ways.

Think About It

“We try to grab pieces of our lives as they speed past us. Photographs freeze those pieces and help us remember how we were.”

—Gene McSweeney

State Standards Covered in This Chapter

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.1
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.2
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.3
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.7
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.A
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.B
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.4
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.5
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.7
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.C
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.D
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.E
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.2.F
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.6

LAFS Covered in This Chapter

Lafs.6.ri.1.1, lafs.6.ri.1.2, lafs.6.ri.1.3, lafs.6.ri.3.7, lafs.6.w.1.2, lafs.6.w.2.4, lafs.6.w.2.5, lafs.6.w.3.7, lafs.6.w.2.6, teks covered in this chapter, 110.22.b.5.f, 110.22.b.8.d, 110.22.b.8.d.i, 110.22.b.6.d, 110.22.b.8.d.iii, 110.22.b.8.f, 110.22.b.10, 110.22.b.11.b, 110.22.b.10.a, 110.22.b.10.b.i, 110.22.b.10.b.ii, 110.22.b.10.b, 110.22.b.10.c, 110.22.b.10.d, 110.22.b.12, 110.22.b.10.e, page 171 from write on track, sample photo essay.

Have volunteers read each paragraph of the sample photo essay. When a photo accompanies a paragraph, stop to discuss the photo. "How does the photo make the ideas clearer?" "What is the photo doing that the text can't do?" Point out to students that each photo must be carefully chosen and positioned, just as the words are carefully chosen and positioned.

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Page 172 from Write on Track

Ask for a student volunteer to read the paragraph in the middle of the photo essay.

Then ask for other volunteers to describe "what the photo shows you." Help students understand that they can learn a great deal from a photo.

Page 173 from Write on Track

Have a volunteer read the paragraph. Then lead a discussion about what they see. Ask students what the photos are doing that words alone can't do.

Then have a volunteer read the last part of the essay.

Page 174 from Write on Track

Writing a photo essay.

Have your students list interesting people they know who have jobs or hobbies that other students would like to find out about. Students then should pick a topic.

Lead students through the next two sets of tips, having them research their topics and collect photos. If they know the person, they may want to interview him or her and take pictures. If they don't know the person, they may need to do research in books and online.

At the bottom of the page, remind students that the photos they include shouldn't just be "for show." They should communicate ideas that words can't express.

Page 175 from Write on Track

Writing, revising, and editing.

After students have gathered information and images for their photo essays, lead them through "Writing a Draft." Then give them time to put their first drafts together.

When the time comes to revise, have students use the questions under "Revising" to improve their work. Also, have peer readers use these questions to suggest improvements.

After revising, have students check for spelling, capitalization, and punctuation errors.

• 01 Understanding Writing
• 02 One Writer's Process
• 03 Qualities of Writing
• 04 Selecting a Topic
• 05 Collecting Details
• 06 Writing a First Draft
• 07 Revising and Editing
• 08 Publishing Your Writing
• 09 Writing Basic Sentences
• 10 Combining Sentences
• 11 Writing Paragraphs
• 12 Understanding Text Structures
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• 14 Writing Lists
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• 17 Writing Friendly Letters
• 18 Writing Personal Narratives
• 19 Writing Family Stories
• 20 Writing Realistic Stories
• 21 Writing Time-Travel Fantasies
• 22 Writing Tall Tales
• 23 Writing Alphabet Books
• 24 How-To Writing
• 25 Writing Information Essays
• 26 Writing Newspaper Stories
• 27 Writing Persuasive Essays
• 28 Writing Opinion Letters
• 29 Writing Book Reviews
• 30 Making Bookmarks
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• 40 Reading to Understand Nonfiction
• 41 Reading Graphics
• 42 Reading New Words
• 43 Building Vocabulary Skills
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• 45 Becoming a Better Speller
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(Definition of photo and essay from the Cambridge English Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

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to change a document in order to deceive people

Sitting on the fence (Newspaper idioms)

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The 25 Most Defining Pieces of Furniture From the Last 100 Years

Three designers, a museum curator, an artist and a design-savvy actress convened at The New York Times to make a list of the most enduring and significant objects for living.

Credit... Clockwise, from top left: Valentin Jeck; courtesy of Bukowskis; courtesy of Zanotta SpA - Italy; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh/Art Resource, NY © ARS, NY; Ellen McDermott © Smithsonian Institution; Herman Miller Archives; Vitra

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By Nick Haramis ,  Max Berlinger ,  Rose Courteau ,  Kate Guadagnino ,  Max Lakin and Evan Moffitt

• March 28, 2024

How do we define furniture? It might seem like a silly question, but it’s one that kept coming up in October of last year, when, in a conference room on the 15th floor of The New York Times building, six experts — the architects and interior designers Rafael de Cárdenas and Daniel Romualdez ; the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design, Paola Antonelli ; the actress and avid furniture collector Julianne Moore ; the artist and sculptor Katie Stout ; and T’s design and interiors director, Tom Delavan — gathered for nearly three hours to make a list of the most influential chairs, sofas and tables, as well as some less obvious household objects, from the past century.

The goal was to land on a wide range of offerings, but there were parameters: To qualify, each piece was required to have been fabricated, even if just as a prototype, within the past 100 years. It also needed to be at least slightly functional. (The Japanese architect Oki Sato’s 2007 Cabbage chair , a treatise on sustainability constructed entirely from a roll of disused paper, isn’t the sturdiest place to sit; nonetheless, it was nominated.) Lighting was excluded from the debate — “which is nuts,” said de Cárdenas, a former men’s wear designer who started his firm in 2006 — unless it was attached to, say, a desk. (The Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass’s illuminated Ultrafragola mirror, which presaged selfie culture by decades, made the cut.) There were no limits placed on provenance, and a piece didn’t need to have been designed by a known name, or even attributable. The jurors were determined to avoid what Antonelli described as “the usual collectors’ items by white German, French and Italian males with a smattering of women, no Latin American or Black — and very little Asian — representation.” While the final list, presented below in roughly the order it was discussed, and not reflecting any kind of hierarchy, does include an icon or two (to omit Charles and Ray Eames or Le Corbusier, the group decided, would be a mistake), diversity of maker (and of materials, styles, processes and prices) was a consideration. In each case, the objects represented more than comfort or utility; every innovation is, in its own way, a historical artifact — a response to the prosperity or unrest into which it was born or a proposal for a more efficient world, maybe a better one.

The participants were asked to submit a list of 10 suggestions beforehand , revealing their own unique tastes and interests. Stout, who curated a show in 2020 with the Shaker Museum in Chatham, N.Y., argued that a bonnet is a slipcover for the head and should count as furniture. (She was voted down.) Moore, an avowed minimalist, petitioned to include austere creations in marble or wood by Poul Kjaerholm and Donald Judd. Romualdez’s more classical choices — among them a daybed by the mid-20th-century French designer Marc du Plantier and a patinated bronze table by the Swiss sculptor Diego Giacometti from the 1980s — were influenced by the luxurious interiors he saw in American magazines while growing up in Manila in the Philippines, long before he’d work for the architects Thierry Despont and Robert A.M. Stern and later open a firm of his own. As Delavan said, “Daniel’s were the chicest. Julianne’s were the purest. Katie’s were the wackiest. Rafael’s were the campiest. And mine were the dullest.” Antonelli’s were, perhaps, the most comprehensive: She created three separate lists to accommodate her top picks, runners-up and wild cards. “I just want us to express an idea of design that excites the world,” she said. As the members of the group settled into the room’s upholstered cantilever chairs — imitations of a Bauhaus style popularized in the 1920s by the Hungarian German Modernist Marcel Breuer — they nodded and offered words of encouragement. And then they got down to business. — Nick Haramis

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

1. Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini and Franco Teodoro, Sacco Chair, 1968

Considered the original beanbag, the Sacco chair is the rare design object to become an instant classic in both rec rooms and museum collections. It was included in MoMA’s seminal 1972 show “ Italy: The New Domestic Landscape ,” which presented furnishings that looked beyond aesthetics and function and toward sociocultural shifts, including the rejection of bourgeois propriety. “Imagine trying to be stuffy while slouching in a beanbag chair,” said the show’s curator, the architect and industrial designer Emilio Ambasz. Indeed, the vaguely pear-shaped blob of stitched vinyl filled with polystyrene beads — the transparent prototype was partially inspired by piles of snow — molded to the body of the sitter and encouraged lounging of the highest order; the hard part was getting out of it. Now that we better understand the environmental impact of polystyrene, the Italian furniture company Zanotta, which has produced the piece from the start and continues to call it the “anatomical easy-chair,” has experimented with a version stuffed with bioplastic derived from sugar cane. — Kate Guadagnino

Tom Delavan: It was revolutionary in terms of material, and it really did filter down to so many imitations that are less expensive. It also addressed how people’s lives were changing: We’re slouching lower and lower as time goes by.

Paola Antonelli: I used to say it was like the Kama Sutra: It has tons of positions. And it was a symbol of an era. I remember pictures of bearded revolutionaries smoking their joints on it. It was all about huddling together and rethinking the world, and it’s still as fresh as ever. I love the fact that you can find it in different shapes. My only big concern about that chair is sustainability. But there’re so many other fillers beside polystyrene, right? I think you can use mushroom mycelium.

Katie Stout: I wish we were all lounging on beanbags right now.

2. Le Corbusier, LC14 Tabouret Cabanon, 1952

Some of the best design originates at home. A great example is the LC14 Tabouret Cabanon, which the Swiss-born French architect Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, known as Le Corbusier, built for his cabin in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a vacation shack that he designed (reportedly in 45 minutes) on the French Riviera. At roughly 160 square feet, the residence was almost monastic, with most of the furniture built in. An exercise in pure functionality, the boxes can be used as chairs, side tables and storage. Made of wood — the Cabanon is chestnut, though other iterations come in oak — they were inspired by a whiskey crate the architect found on the beach, with dovetail joints and oblong holes in the sides for lifting. Prefiguring both modular furniture and the nothing-to-hide sensibility of industrial décor, they serve as rustic altars to the right angle, about which Le Corbusier once wrote, “Simple and naked / yet knowable. … It is the answer and the guide.” — Rose Courteau

Julianne Moore: In my business, this is what we call an apple box. I stand on one if I’m shorter than the actor I’m working with. Le Corbusier created an object of desirability, but it’s something you could make yourself and use a million different ways. [The English furniture designer] Jasper Morrison did his own version. I have two in my house that were built by a grip to hold a certain kind of camera. A painter once said to me, “They’re sort of amazing. They look like a [Constantin] Brâncuși [sculpture].” It’s a simple object that reminds different people of different things. And while it’s sort of silly that the Corbusier version has become this untouchable museum piece, I like the fact that it’s just a box.

Delavan: I’m going to argue against it. You can’t say that Le Corbusier invented the box. My feeling is that he was basically reusing a thing that already existed.

Rafael de Cárdenas: I’m not defending it, but he did recontextualize it.

Antonelli: Even though I’ve never been a fan of this, I buy your argument. I had [the Italian architect and designer Achille] Castiglioni as a teacher. And he used to always say that redesign is a legitimate form of design — to take something that exists in the world and appropriate it and improve upon it.

3. Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand; Chaise Longue à Réglage Continu; 1928

In 1929, Le Corbusier , along with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret and their colleague and fellow architect and designer Charlotte Perriand , created a Modernist interior for the Salon d’Automne art exhibition in Paris. In a sly rejection of the enameled embellishments of Art Deco, the prevailing style of the time, they presented concealed lights, glass-topped tables, mirrored cabinets and seating featuring tubular steel, including the lissome Chaise Longue à Réglage Continu, which they’d first produced and placed the previous year in a villa just outside of Paris. With an H-shaped, bicolor-steel base cradling chromed tubes that followed the form of a supine human body — dipping to accommodate the hips and cresting to support the knees — it was among the first ergonomically conscious pieces of furniture ever manufactured. The frame, which could be adjusted to change the angle of repose, held a slim, black fur mattress with a cylindrical headrest. Far too radical for its time and expensive to fabricate, the piece languished for decades but emerged as a coveted emblem of Modernism when Cassina started producing it in 1965. Le Corbusier, who held functionality in high esteem, is famous for saying that a house is a machine for living. It’s no surprise, then, that he considered this chaise longue a machine for resting. His biographer Charles Jencks had another take: “It is as if the body is being propped up on fingertips like a precious jewel.” — K.G.

Delavan: I love this chair because, even though it looks weird, it addresses how our bodies are meant to sit. It’s ergonomic in a way that chairs or sofas weren’t before. Every zero-gravity chair is a version of this.

Antonelli: Interestingly, for a piece of modern furniture, it’s also comfortable.

Moore: And it references what was going on in the world at the time: industrialism and metal suddenly entering our lives and our homes.

Delavan: Think of how crazy this must have seemed in 1928.

Moore: When so many people were still living with traditional furniture.

Antonelli: If we’re to include a tubular steel chair, this is the one.

4. George Nakashima, Slab I Coffee Table, Circa 1950

These days, live-edge furniture — fashioned from a slice of a log with at least one side left ruggedly intact — seems to be everywhere. Each piece owes a debt to the raw splendor of George Nakashima’s original slab coffee tables. Nakashima, who was born in Spokane, Wash., to Japanese immigrant parents, established himself as a furniture designer before being imprisoned with his family at the Minidoka internment camp in Idaho during World War II. While there, he further refined his woodworking skills under the tutelage of a fellow internee, the master carpenter Gentaro Kenneth Hikogawa. After Nakashima’s release in 1943, he settled in New Hope, Pa., where he established his own studio and made furniture for Knoll. Believing that his work gave trees a second life, he fused the austere solidity of Shaker furniture with the Japanese concepts of wabi, sabi and shibui — emphasizing age and simplicity. This bundle of ideals was best expressed in the Slab table, with a top made from a single slice of American black walnut or cherry, occasionally accented with functional elements like a stabilizing butterfly joint. Instead of excising the irregularities and imperfections, Nakashima chose to highlight them, a radical approach at the time. Each table was unique to the tree and the woodworker who handled it. The furniture designer enshrined sensitivity, not domination, as the key to sublime design, in contrast to the ornate embellishments of Art Deco and the factory aesthetics of the postwar era, which embraced machinery as a human triumph. — R.C.

Moore: I’m obsessed with craft, and I think that Nakashima was the first person who brought it into mainstream conversation. I think about what he went through, how he emerged from the internment camp and returned to making his furniture. You could go to New Hope and say, “I want a table, some chairs and a bed,” and he would do it. He was expressing himself as an artist and introducing this idea of organic Modernism.

Delavan: This table inspired a lot of craftspeople to be like, “I can make one, too.”

De Cárdenas: There’re also kitsch versions of it. So much defining furniture is high culture, but this had mass appeal.

Antonelli: I like that it inspired people to make their own little monsters.

5. Bill Stumpf, Ergon Chair, 1976

The ancient Greeks made chairs with curved backrests, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that ergonomics, the study of people in their workplace undertaken to improve efficiency and welfare, was heartily embraced by industrial designers. That’s when Herman Miller brought on the American designer Bill Stumpf , who’d worked with medical experts while doing postgraduate research at the University of Wisconsin to conduct studies on ideal sitting posture that incorporated X-rays and time-lapse photography. In 1976, the year that word processing became available on microcomputers, Stumpf came up with the swiveling Ergon office chair, constructed with pillowy pieces of fabric-covered foam (one for the back and another for the bottom), which could be wheeled in any direction. The chair also had gas-lift levers that controlled height and tilt — good news for women, who were joining the work force in record numbers, and whose comfort had been ignored by earlier designers. But Stumpf didn’t stop there; in collaboration with the Los Angeles-born Don Chadwick, he went on to debut 1994’s Aeron chair, which featured a higher backrest covered in a flexible textile called pellicle. It remains, with a tweak or two, one of those pieces that’s so ubiquitous you’re not likely to notice or think about it. That is, until a co-worker nabs yours. — K.G.

Delavan: It’s one of the earliest examples of an adjustable office chair. Part of it was that women were now in the workplace, so they needed the chair to be a different size. Paola, you’d nominated the Aeron chair, which is great, but I feel like Stumpf’s idea started here. The Aeron is a refinement of the Ergon.

Antonelli: I saw the Aeron chair being made when I was living in Los Angeles, and I remember it in the World Trade Center lobbies. It’s the first thing I acquired for the Museum of Modern Art when I started working there. But I prefer this one because it’s earlier. There was the Ettore Sottsass chair for Olivetti — the yellow one [from 1972] — but I don’t care, because this one was probably more affordable, and it went everywhere.

6. Gae Aulenti, Table With Wheels, 1980

The “High Tech” moment in design started in the early 1970s, as more and more New York City artists were moving into lofts in SoHo’s abandoned cast-iron buildings and furnishing them with functional pieces picked up at hospitals, offices, warehouses and restaurant supply stores. In these open-plan homes and those that aspired to be like them, you were likely to find white walls, exposed pipes, track lighting, Metro Super Erecta wire shelving and stainless-steel commercial refrigerators. In 1980, at the tail-end of that era, the Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti introduced Table With Wheels, a thick pane of beveled glass mounted on large rubber casters that she intended to resemble the wooden trolleys used to cart heavy pieces around the factory of Milan’s FontanaArte design studio, where she served as art director. The table had the playfulness and poeticism of a Marcel Duchamp readymade, and it presaged glass as one of the decade’s trendy materials for interiors — one seen increasingly throughout the 1980s in the form of smooth reflective surfaces and chunky, semitransparent blocks. In 1993, Aulenti riffed on her design, releasing Tour, an updated model with bicycle wheels. — K.G.

De Cárdenas: I know it’s just a piece of glass on casters, but I think it transcends class, style and era.

Moore: You know what else it speaks to? High-tech design.

Daniel Romualdez: If we’re doing high tech, I think we should include the Metro shelves.

Moore: No! That then knocks out Dieter Rams.

7. Dieter Rams, 606 Universal Shelving System, 1960

The German functionalist Dieter Rams didn’t invent modular design, but as the creator of the 606 Universal Shelving System for Vitsoe, he can be credited as one of its early perfecters. The system’s construction is strikingly simple, with aluminum E-Tracks mounted to walls from which shelves, cabinets and even tables can be hung using no-equipment-required pins. Adjustable and customizable, it can be adapted to a wide range of spaces, needs and aesthetics. (When they’re full, the wafer-thin but deceptively strong shelves, made of powder-coated, laser-cut steel, nearly disappear.) The unit embodies all 10 of the design principles that Rams, an early advocate of environmental sustainability, formulated in the 1970s (No. 1: “Good design is innovative”; No. 5: “Good design is unobtrusive”), but the real reason it’s been revered for decades may be its incomparable durability (No. 7: “Good design is long-lasting”). Parts purchased today can be used interchangeably with those from 1960, when the shelving first went into production. — R.C.

Moore: I’m going to go to bat for Dieter Rams. I’m a big fan of the idea of a system, particularly in terms of the 20th century and how we started to live [in a more transient way], which led to things that collapse or stack and are lightweight. The idea is that you can buy this piece and change it — use it for books, records or clothing. I’m really interested in industrial design, a lot of which we don’t even think of as being designed. It often seems to have come out of nowhere, and I feel that way about this shelving.

Antonelli: If we’re going to include a shelving system, much as I love Metro’s [steel storage] shelves, Dieter Rams should be on here.

Moore: He’s a rock star.

Stout: Even just this image [from the Vitsoe catalog], with a game of Twister stored on a shelf, feels so democratic to me. All these different tiers of design.

Moore: I love the Vitsoe catalog, frankly. It’s very soothing.

8. Faye Toogood, Roly-Poly Chair, 2014

Faye Toogood’s Roly-Poly chair, which debuted in 2014 as part of a collection of similarly rotund fiberglass furniture titled Assemblage 4, isn’t just a seminal piece of design — it’s also got a sense of humor. The key lies in the contrast between its jolly, potbellied seat, evocative of a cartoon animal, with four squat, cylindrical legs, and the confident way it occupies space. The chair is a corporeal symbol of maternal strength; Toogood, a multi-hyphenate British clothing and interior designer, has said that the roundness was inspired by her pregnancy. (“I’ve got fat,” she told an architecture magazine upon the chair’s release.) Indeed, it’s the kind of perch that makes you never want to get up, to relinquish your vanity and drop into a state of permanent comfort. With no hard edges, it’s both cleverly child-safe and endlessly imaginative, conjuring bubble letters, elephants and balloons. But although the Roly-Poly grew out of the designer’s experience with her changing body, it offers something more universal: a softer, more whimsical take on minimalism, which in recent years has turned away from sharp-cornered austerity toward the more organic silhouettes of the circle and the arch. — R.C.

Moore: Faye was at the forefront of a movement where things suddenly got soft.

Antonelli: And big .

Delavan: She changed the silhouette.

De Cárdenas: I remember her presentation in Milan in 2011. There were these black hard-boiled eggs, and cheese served on pieces of charcoal. I mean, it sucked scraping your teeth on stuff, but it was also cool. And then there was furniture, but the whole thing was the presentation. Whatever that is, some people do it well and most people don’t. But I think she started it. Everything in design at the time was slick and boxy, highlighting craftsmanship, but this work wasn’t.

Delavan: It felt like something she could have sculpted.

Moore: And it was new. It’s always exciting to be woken up like that.

9. Unknown, but Possibly Jean-Michel Frank; Parsons Table; Circa 1930

Some pieces of furniture are so unobtrusive and chameleon-like that they hardly feel designed. Such is the case with the Parsons table, whose defining feature is its ratio: No matter the table’s size, its legs — which stand flush with the corners of its surface — must always be equal in width to the thickness of its top. It’s thought to have emerged from a design project completed in the early 1930s at the Paris satellite of New York’s Parsons School of Design, the result of an assignment often attributed to the aristocratic French decorator Jean-Michel Frank, who was a lecturer there at the time. (The American designer Joseph B. Platt is also often cited as having a hand in the piece.) Known for creating magisterial spaces for the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the composer Cole Porter, Frank put aside his usual interest in such sumptuous materials as shagreen and obsidian, challenging the students to design a table so elemental that it would retain its basic character and integrity regardless of finish. — R.C.

Romualdez: Leading up to this debate, I asked ChatGPT for a list of influential furniture and nothing surprised me. [But] I wanted to [choose items] that influenced me personally. Growing up in the Philippines, I only saw things in magazines — like [1960s François-Xavier] Lalanne sheep [sculptures]. They were in Valentino [Garavani]’s chalet, [Yves] Saint Laurent’s library, the Agnellis’ Milanese apartment.

Moore: Unfortunately, Lalanne sheep are just signifiers of enormous wealth.

Romualdez: Yes, but for me, nose pressed to the glass, it made me question, “What makes something fancy?” People had flocks of them. When Julianne [and I were talking about our lists], she asked, “What’s your favorite dining table?” Although simple and plain, this is the first thing that came to mind.

De Cárdenas: We can’t not include the Parsons table.

Romualdez: A friend of mine, [the American philanthropist] Deeda Blair, used to tell me, “You can’t get an 18th-century coffee table. It’s a conceit of the modern world.” I was attracted to this as a foil to [what’s in] most people’s fancy living rooms.

10. Ettore Sottsass, Ultrafragola Illuminated Mirror, 1970

Although the Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass’s undulating electrified mirror, which emits a dusky pink glow, predates social media by four decades, it somehow anticipated the age of the selfie. Sottsass, who would in the 1980s spearhead the madcap Milan-based collective known as the Memphis Group, crafted it as an apparent tribute to womanhood — its ripples supposedly reference flowing hair and body curves. Such an idea may now seem a study in objectification; nonetheless, the mirror’s enchantments are undeniable, as proven by its vibrant second life on social media. The musician Frank Ocean and the model Bella Hadid are among those who’ve captured themselves, like modern-day Narcissuses, in its reflection. The appeal is obvious: It’s seductive, flirtatious and lighthearted — décor as an antidepressant in troubling times. Perhaps Sottsass himself best explained why the glowing, flowing mirror is universally beloved. “When I was young, all we ever heard about was functionalism, functionalism, functionalism,” he once said. “It’s not enough. Design should also be sensual and exciting.” — Max Berlinger

Stout: Sottsass isn’t my favorite, but this has been so influential, especially in terms of marketing and the rise of Corporate Memphis. Even though it’s from the 1970s, it seems to have been made for the Instagram era. He and [the Italian architect and designer] Gaetano Pesce have been so significant to an entire generation of designers, especially right now.

Antonelli: I don’t think we need to include Pesce.

De Cárdenas: Pesce was always niche and was left out of the design conversation for a long time. Now his work feels very relevant again.

11. Billy Baldwin, Slipper Chair, 1950s

Until the 20th century, what we now call the slipper chair was a private affair, a boudoir staple of Victorian-era excess with an armless seat to accommodate the wide petticoats and corset-bound women unable to bend over. But in the 1950s, the American decorator Billy Baldwin yanked the chair with an overstuffed profile out of the dressing room and got it ready for cocktail hour. He threw out the brocade jacquard and flouncy trim for something more clean-cut and modern; the low-to-the ground, high-backed seat became sheathed in a pleated skirt or tight slipcover tailored straight to the floor. (Baldwin believed that too many naked chair legs made a room “restless.”) Still, it didn’t completely escape its beau monde past. Baldwin’s clientele included the likes of socialites Jacqueline Onassis and Nan Kempner. For Diana Vreeland, he designed a slipper chair in a clashing print to complement the fashion editor’s scarlet chintz “garden in hell” room in her Park Avenue apartment. About his stump-legged rejoinders to Continental refinement, Baldwin once said, “We can recognize and give credit where credit is due, to the debt of taste we owe Europe, but we have taste, too.” — Max Lakin

Romualdez: I’m probably the most traditional decorator in this room. But I think we need to talk about banal furniture that you don’t realize is everywhere — that you don’t even think of as being designed. I was obsessed with this Billy Baldwin chair when I was in school. It’s tiny, but extremely comfortable. And I love that it’s dumb. It doesn’t do anything, which makes it so versatile.

Moore: Every furniture store in America has this chair.

De Cárdenas: I used it one time [for a decorating project]. There was a fabric that the client loved, and we didn’t know how to work it into the room. I was like, “Let’s just make a slipper chair.” It changes its identity every time you upholster it.

Nick Haramis: I grew up quite modestly, and every family in my neighborhood had a version of a slipper chair in the nice room.

Delavan: Originally, the slipper chair was supposed to be in the boudoir. He brought it into the living room.

Romualdez: I also love that he had extremely American taste when most people in that social class were Francophiles.

12. Philippe Starck, Louis Ghost Chair, 2002

Modern design in Europe and the United States was largely a reaction to the ostentation that came before it, particularly among royalty and other privileged households. One hallmark of the frilly old style is the Louis XV/XVI Medallion armchair, named for the 18th-century French monarchs with whom it found favor. Considered a cabriolet due to its rounded concave backrest and open armrests, it was much lighter than the close-sided bergère. More than 200 years later, the French industrial and interior designer Philippe Starck developed his version from a single mold injection of liquid polycarbonate, which hardens to a clear, lightweight and durable Plasticine material also used in cars and fighter jets. Although he eliminated the Medallion’s decorative elements, Starck retained its voluptuous profile, neither conforming to nor fully departing from the expectations of contemporary design. — Evan Moffitt

Moore: I hate this chair so much.

Romualdez: Everyone loved this chair in the beginning.

De Cárdenas: Do we hate it because it’s so ubiquitous?

Antonelli: No, we hate it because it’s so ’80s. But even though I find it terrible, it was so influential.

De Cárdenas: I love Philippe Starck and his total disregard for the history of furniture. Did you see that episode of [the comedy series] “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” [2015-19]? Jacqueline [Jane Krakowski’s character] doesn’t have any furniture because she can’t afford it. Kimmy comes over, and she’s like, “You don’t have any furniture.” [Voorhees] gestures to a completely empty space and says she has Philippe Starck Ghost chairs.

13. Margarete “Grete” Schütte-Lihotzky; Frankfurt Kitchen, from the Ginnheim-Höhenblick housing estate; 1926-27

In the aftermath of World War I, Frankfurt, Germany, responded to a growing housing crisis with a sweeping civic effort centered on affordable and modern public residences. The Austrian architect Margarete “Grete” Schütte-Lihotzky , a radical-minded proponent of Red Vienna’s social-democratic reforms who designed apartments for single working women, and, with the architects Adolf Loos and Josef Frank, complexes for veterans and the disabled, was tasked with developing kitchens for these New Frankfurt apartments. In planning her fitted kitchens, Schütte-Lihotzky, who lived until the age of 102, aimed to create something hygienic and dignified for the urban working class. She consulted labor-efficiency studies, interviewed housewives and women’s groups and took inspiration from the rigorously efficient galley kitchens of railway dining cars. The result was a space equipped with innovations such as a gas stove, built-in cabinetry and a tiled backsplash. The room was small by today’s suburban standards — 13 feet long by 7 feet wide — but Schütte-Lihotzky’s vision helped pioneer the notion of today’s kitchen as the center of domestic life. — M.L.

Delavan: I don’t consider a room to be furniture.

Antonelli: Well, we do at MoMA. Maybe this is a system or assemblage of furniture, but it really determined, at least until the arrival of the American kitchen, how we designed kitchens almost like boats: keeping everything together in one place.

De Cárdenas: Before this, were kitchens just a fire and a table?

Antonelli: They had several pieces, but they were all disparate and loose. This was in tune with Existenzminimum [a concept that was developed in response to the German housing crisis of the 1920s]. The rationalist architects of the New Objectivity were trying to fit as much as possible into an apartment and then orient it so that the sun would also help them live healthier lives and heat it up. It was almost like going back to [the first century B.C. Roman architect and engineer] Vitruvius, the idea that Nature can help cities and homes be cleaner, healthier and more efficient.

De Cárdenas: From Ikea to fancy custom kitchens, they’re all basically versions of this.

14. Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck, Madame Dakar Sofa, 2009

When Patrizia Moroso, the creative director of the Northern Italy-based family furniture company that bears her last name, commissioned a show dedicated to the creative prowess and craftsmanship of Africa, a continent that had been historically overlooked by the Western design world, among the works that seized the imagination was the Madame Dakar sofa. Boldly graphic and rendered with both an eye to the future and reverence for the past by the designers Ayse Birsel and Bibi Seck, who split their time between New York, Paris and Dakar, it contributed to the current interest in African design and technique as well as a mania for Afrofuturism. Made in Moroso’s facility in the West African nation, the hand-woven indoor-outdoor piece is constructed by stringing the plastic threads used in fishing nets — in reference to Senegalese traditions — into a herringbone pattern, which is then slung like a hammock over thick, splayed steel legs. — M.B.

Antonelli: This is gorgeous, but is it influential?

Moore: It had an impactful moment, but it was over quickly.

Stout: I think we should include it.

Antonelli: I agree. Bibi, who spent his youth in Dakar, worked with African weavers to produce a couch that is free from any nostalgia, just celebrating the tremendous potential that can come from a true mind- and hand-meld with expert local artisans.

15. Unknown, Monobloc Chair, 20th Century

Design history is lousy with icons — this iconic sideboard, that iconic zoomorphic torchier — and many of them live on as “authorized” reproductions, costing thousands of dollars, while the rest of us make do with mass-market dupes. The monobloc chair is the antidote to such design idolatry: a single piece of extruded white plastic, immune to trend and cultish adoration. With a barely verifiable history, it’s both the original and the imitation, and costs very little to produce. To make a chair out of just one piece of material is something of a design Holy Grail, one that became more attainable around midcentury with advancements in plastics technology. Early mass-produced chairs — including Verner Panton’s Panton chair and Vico Magistretti’s Selene — were all a bit too polished or Space Age-y to achieve ubiquity. The French engineer Henry Massonnet’s Fauteuil 300 , from 1972, is often credited as the closest source for what we now call the monobloc, though it, too, is more refined than the standard issue. (There’s also a credible claim that Canadian designer D.C. Simpson created an even earlier version in 1946.) Depending on where you land on the affordability sustainability axis, monoblocs are either a triumph of democratic design or a mess of disposable mass consumption — the red to-go cup of chairs. Either way, it’s often spoken of as the most widely used piece of furniture in the world; the Zelig of plastic chairs, it shows up at both Biloxi cookouts and roadside bars on the outskirts of Jakarta. With zero adornments except for its flared legs and fanned seashell back, it cannot be called beautiful, though it is familiar, and for some people, that can have the same pleasing effect. — M.L.

Antonelli: The monobloc is important. It allows us to talk about history. It allows us to talk about copies. It allows us to talk about footprint. It allows us to talk about the history of plastics.

Moore: Who designed it?

Antonelli: We don’t really know. In every part of the world, you’ll find these chairs.

Romualdez: I had them when we first moved into our house in Montauk, N.Y., and some snotty person said, “I can’t believe you have these ugly chairs.” But they’re so practical and comfortable.

Delavan: Are they ugly or just ugly by association?

Antonelli: They’re ugly. But I do believe that the opposite of beautiful isn’t ugly, it’s lazy.

Romualdez: I’d nominated a Philippe Hiquily armchair from 1971 because it was one of the ugliest chairs I’ve seen. He literally just did furniture for the Rothschilds and people like that. But like with Miuccia Prada’s clothes, when you see something ugly, it’ll often affect you later.

16. Verner Panton, Vilbert Chair, 1992

The term “flat-packed” might trigger traumatic memories of trying to assemble furniture with puzzling instructions and a flimsy Allen wrench; one thing it doesn’t conjure is cutting-edge interiors. But by the 1990s, Ikea had partnered with a number of top designers, including the Danish master Verner Panton, who created this gravity-defying confection. Made from medium-density fiberboard (MDF) with a melamine coating, a material often used by the Swedish company, Panton’s chair has obliquely angled back and leg panels, held together with screws, that hardly seem strong enough to stand up on their own, much less accommodate a human body. Here, Panton, best known for his space-age designs, including the S-shaped Panton chair — fabricated in 1967 using a tongue-like piece of molded plastic — and his hallucinogenic interiors for hotels, restaurants and private homes, did the unexpected: He embraced hard edges, even if only as a matter of practicality. (Imagine, for instance, flat-packing his amorphous Living Tower, a more than six-foot-high upholstered seating apparatus from 1969.) The Vilbert stands as a homage to the Zig-Zag and Red Blue chairs by the early 20th-century Dutch de Stijl movement designer Gerrit Rietveld, as well as to the tinker toy aesthetic of the 1980s Memphis Group, its influences spanning about 50 years of candy-colored geometric dreams. — E.M.

De Cárdenas: I’ve owned these chairs.

Moore: Why’d you get rid of them?

De Cárdenas: There was a time when I had a very Memphis-y place. Then I sold it all at auction, at the only moment when this kind of fiberboard laminate furniture might have been valuable. This was Ikea doing high design and it was too ahead of its time to be commercial.

Delavan: That it came flat-packed is cool.

De Cárdenas: That was the whole point.

Delavan: That’s why it was relatively cheap, too.

17. Clara Porset, Butaque Chair, Possibly 1930s

“Butaque,” the Mexican name for the low, inclined J-shaped wooden lounger prevalent in parts of Latin America, refers to a shape originating in the 16th century, a colonial-era cross between traditional Spanish hip-joint armchairs and pre-Columbian duhos — often hardwood ritual seats used within Indigenous Taino Caribbean culture to commune with deities. In the early 19th century, the Mexican port city of Campeche was a locus of butaque production and the chair’s main exporter to the United States. (Thomas Jefferson was obsessed with them, conscripting enslaved carpenter John Hemmings to produce reproductions for his plantation.) The interior and furniture designer Clara Porset, born into a wealthy family in Cuba and educated in New York and Paris, may have begun making her butaques after emigrating to Mexico in the mid-1930s as a political exile for her participation in the Cuban resistance. Porset reinterpreted the butaque through a Bauhaus lens (she studied under Josef and Anni Albers, practitioners of the movement, at Black Mountain College in North Carolina), designing numerous iterations in local materials, including mahogany, wicker and leather, and reducing the structure to its essential form. Porset’s circa 1957 Modernist reinterpretation of the butaque is her most enduring design, a sinuous shape in laminated wood and woven wicker, with a high-backed seat balanced on half-moon legs. The Mexican architect Luis Barragán commissioned several versions; Albers, also enchanted with Mexican aesthetics, produced an interpretation of his own. — M.L.

Antonelli: Clara Porset, a Cuban designer working in Mexico, took a vernacular chair and made it into an object, which isn’t dissimilar from what [the Italian architect] Gio Ponti did with the Superleggera [chair, from 1957]. This is the Latin American chair. And it’s supercomfortable.

De Cárdenas: Although she was from a wealthy family, she was opposed to the class inequality in Cuba. I believe she went to Mexico because of its strong early socialist movement, and that’s how she became part of the Diego Rivera scene. I think this chair was meant to be sort of invisible — graceful, but not foregrounded.

18. Hella Jongerius, Polder Sofa, 2005

In an industry that prizes sober sophistication, the Dutch designer Hella Jongerius’s Polder sofa is a clever rebuttal: a monumental piece that’s proudly imperfect, flaunting its faults as virtues. Or, as this publication noted in 2009 — while acknowledging the paradox of the couch’s exquisite construction with its funky aesthetic — “[We] feel as fondly toward it as we would a shabby old sofa.” Its squared-off cushions in varying sizes and uneven backrests upholstered in gradations of earthy colors (clay-like reds, mossy greens, oceanic blues) are interesting from every angle, tufted with kooky, often subtly mismatched buttons of mother-of-pearl, horn or wood. Named for a low-lying system of fields in the Netherlands that have been reclaimed from the sea by dikes and drainage canals, the Polder is a love letter to Jongerius’s verdant homeland and its ingenious natural engineering, but it’s also a paean to the comforts of domesticity and the beauty of everyday life. — M.B.

Antonelli: I think we should include Hella Jongerius. We don’t have Dutch designers, and she’s truly one of the most important.

Delavan: But what is it about this sofa?

Antonelli: There’s something very informal about it. She uses buttons at random. It was from just before the time when she became art director for colors [and materials] at Vitra. And it’s a gorgeous, more contemporary precursor to Piero Lissoni’s Extrasoft.

19. Piero Lissoni, Extrasoft Sofa, 2008

Conceived in 2008 for Living Divani by the brand’s creative director, Piero Lissoni — who has also designed for Kartell, Cappellini and the kitchen maker Boffi, among others — the Extrasoft embodies several of the design trends of the last half-century in a single object: the move toward simple geometry; furniture that sits ever closer to the ground; and the profusion of squishy, somewhat overstuffed forms. But the sofa’s defining feature is its modularity, a distillation of earlier experiments in sectional design, including Mario Bellini’s bulbous Camaleonda (1970) for what was then known as C & B Italia (now B & B Italia) and Hans Hopfer’s vibrantly patterned Mah Jong (1971) for Roche Bobois. With irregularly sized orthogonal sections that connect via hidden hooks, it can be configured into a multitude of shapes; it’s as much interactive art as it is furniture. And because its orientation is largely horizontal, the Extrasoft can spread through almost any space, providing places to recline, socialize or sleep, recalling a giant platform bed or those sexy conversation pits of the 1970s. — K.G.

Antonelli: One of the interesting things about Piero’s couch, as with Faye’s chair and the Madame Dakar sofa, is that we don’t have other extremely recent pieces.

Delavan: I was also trying to figure out a more recent thing that’s important.

De Cárdenas: The idea of being able to move it around is kind of amazing, but I don’t think Piero Lissoni needs the airtime.

Haramis: I’m not sure that popularity should be a reason not to include someone.

Antonelli: He’s right — we’re talking about impact.

20. Charles and Ray Eames, Side Chair, 1952

Few designers evoke postwar American modernism — and optimism — better than the husband-and-wife duo Charles and Ray Eames , who lived and worked in Los Angeles. During World War II, the couple used plywood plies to develop new splints for the Navy, refining molding techniques they later applied to domestic designs, including the Side Chair, a simple shell mounted on an Eiffel Tower lattice of wire spindle legs. At once biomorphic and industrial, the Side Chair is now endlessly cribbed and reinterpreted, showing up in high-end restaurants and Brooklyn townhouses. Originally a molded piece of fiberglass that came in shades of gray, it’s now fashioned in postindustrial recycled material. Perhaps more than any other Eames piece, it fully expresses the couple’s animating principle: slightly goofy but still disarmingly elegant. — M.L.

Antonelli: If we don’t include it, people will say we’re missing [something by] Charles and Ray Eames. I’d do the fiberglass chair because it was also about using a material that had been an important part of the war effort.

De Cárdenas: I want to go on the record not to put in the Eames. I don’t think they need this. There’re entire museum shows dedicated to their work.

Haramis: I don’t think they can be left off a list of influential furniture.

Antonelli: There’re whole stadiums with seats that are derivative of them.

Moore: And it’s egalitarian design, and I’m all for that.

Antonelli: Even with Ray, we don’t have enough women on this list. How is that possible?

Moore: The … patriarchy?

21. Yayoi Kusama, “Accumulation No. 1,” 1962

Can an armchair be sexual? Funny? A feminist manifesto? In the hands of the Surrealist Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama , the answer is a resounding — and perplexing — yes. Her fabric sculpture is furniture reimagined through a provocateur’s lens. Covered in exploding clusters of hand-sewn stuffed tentacles, which Kusama has described as phalluses, “Accumulation No. 1” was constructed in her downtown New York loft, in the same building that housed the studio of her friend the Swedish American sculptor Claes Oldenburg . The chair also seems to have anticipated the strange eroticism of the Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo’s spring 1997 “ lumps and bumps ” collection 35 years later. Tapping into Kusama’s themes of repetition and whimsy, the peculiar creation originated from a more serious impulse: “[I] began making penises in order to heal my feelings of disgust toward sex. Reproducing the objects … was my way of conquering the fear,” she once said. It’s also been read as a taunt lobbed at the male-dominated art scene of the era and the ultimate subversion of a domestic object by a female artist: an armchair overrun with limp penises. — M.B.

Delavan: Are those …

Stout: Yes, they’re little peens.

Antonelli: I used to teach a class at U.C.L.A., and I’d say that there’re two big differences between art and design: One difference is that while an artist can choose whether to work for many people or not, a designer, by definition, works for others; the second is who you sell it to and how you market it. [The artists] Martin Puryear and Andrea Zittel are fabulous designers, too. But someone like Kusama or Donald Judd? No. Those are the ones who think they can just do something. I remember having an argument with [the former chief curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art] Kirk Varnedoe. He said, “Paola, you should consider [acquiring a piece by] Donald Judd. I said, “Why? It’s bad design. If you want to acquire it for the sculpture collection, go for it. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s uncomfortable. It rips your stockings. It’s not childproofed. And if it didn’t have Donald Judd’s name, you’d never buy it.”

Stout: So much of the history of art and design has been about white men. I think this chair was a commentary on that.

Antonelli: While I appreciate that, I just don’t want to acknowledge any artist descending toward design.

Moore: Does design just mean utility? Whenever I have an argument with people about art and design, it seems to come down to the idea that design is something you’d use. And what I don’t understand is why that’s less than. As a person who wants to live with objects, I don’t value a lamp any less than I do a painting. I want to live with them both.

22. Gary Panter and Ric Heitzman; Chairry, From “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”; 1986

If your chair could talk, would it beg to be sat on? Would it complain about bearing your weight? In the beloved TV series “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” — created in 1986 by its star, Paul Reubens — an armchair is a main character. Voiced by the actress Alison Mork, Chairry invites a wide range of guests and regulars, from Dolly Parton to S. Epatha Merkerson, to plop down on her demented dinosaur face. With her velvety turquoise skin (or, as more prosaic sorts might call it, upholstery), oversize maw (with rounded white teeth positioned between the cushions) and circular eyes with curling lashes, Chairry was an important precursor to Barney, the singing dinosaur who emerged six years later. Chairry — along with the other anthropomorphic elements of the trippy set designed by the boisterous painters and puppet masters Gary Panter, Wayne White and Ric Heitzman — gently mocked the innocence of 1950s children’s shows and subverted the family values rhetoric of the Reagan era. Channeling the colorful postmodernism of the 1980s, Pee-wee’s world was an outsider artist’s pastiche of psychedelia, hippiedom and joyous toddlerhood. For some adult viewers, it was also a queer-coded haven. — E.M.

De Cárdenas: There were at least three tributes in The Times in the days after Paul Reubens died [in July 2023]. One of them was about what a truly democratic, inclusive show this was. I remember Cher being on a holiday special [1988’s “Christmas at Pee-wee’s Playhouse”]. You know how he’d always have a word of the day? Cher came to introduce the secret word. And every time he said it everything in the room would scream. It was a kid’s show, but it wasn’t just for kids.

Stout: Design for kids is so important.

Moore: And influential. As a parent, I think all those anthropomorphized pieces of furniture are wonderful.

Antonelli: It’s certainly very American.

De Cárdenas: Pee-wee spoke to gays and misfits the way that [the Swiss artist H.R.] Giger [known for his design of the title creature in the 1979 horror film “Alien”] spoke to bros.

Moore: Frankly, I don’t think bros are reading this article.

23. Nanda Vigo, Due Più Chair, 1971

The Milanese artist, architect and designer Nanda Vigo helped usher in the disco era with this chair, originally manufactured for the Italian furniture company Conconi SNC/More Coffee. While its chromed iron or brass tubing evokes Bauhaus functionalism, the cylindrical, fur-covered seat and backrest, not unlike the giant rollers that provide polish at a carwash, give it a touch of Pop Art kitsch. Vigo, who founded her studio in 1959 after spending time in Switzerland and the United States, was inspired by science fiction and the style codes of the burgeoning aerospace industry, as immortalized in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey . She also became known for her fur-lined conversation pits and staircases, like the ones she installed in the 1960s in the poetically named Lo Scarabeo Sotto la Foglia (the Beetle under the Leaf), a private residence in northern Italy. On the Due Più, the material adds a softer touch to the hard-edge minimalism of Vigo’s contemporaries, with results that are undeniably groovy. — E.M.

De Cárdenas: This was very ahead of its time. As ubiquitous as it is, I’ve never seen it at anyone’s house.

Moore: How do you use it?

De Cárdenas: Right? Like, “Sit here, have coffee with me.”

Antonelli: I would like to have a dining table with 10 of them. It’s not super comfortable after a while, but it’s pretty great.

Romualdez: It’s the perfect makeup chair.

24. Alvar Aalto, Stool 60, 1933

With three L-shaped legs and a childlike disk seat, the startlingly simple Stool 60 encapsulates the design ethos of the Finnish designer Alvar Aalto . The result of a partnership between Aalto — fresh off his work on Paimio Sanatorium, a triumph of 1930s Functionalist architecture — and the carpenter Otto Korhonen, it represents their first experiment together with what would become an emblematic technique: They sliced fissures into pale birch slats, softened them with heat and water and then filled each gap in the wood with a timber strip dipped in adhesive. They then bent the assemblage at a 90-degree angle, creating sinuous yet sturdy curved supports. The stool’s impact can be seen not only in the innumerable ways it’s in dialogue with its environment — a place to sit or a small side table, it can be stacked into an elegant column to be stored — but in its playful execution as well. Unsurprisingly, it’s been in continual production, and has been deeply influential: Ikea’s Frosta was widely considered to be an offshoot, and the streetwear brand Supreme collaborated with Artek on a 2017 version with a checkerboard motif. — M.B.

Antonelli: We need Scandinavian design.

Delavan: Then the Aalto stool makes the most sense.

Stout: It’s almost so iconic that I’m like, “Get rid of it.”

Moore: I have about 20 of the Ikea version of this stool in my basement left over from a kid’s party.

De Cárdenas: They make an Ikea version of this?

Delavan: Those aren’t quite as thick.

Moore: And very wobbly.

25. Shiro Kuramata, Feather Stool, 1990

“Enchantment should also be considered as function,” said the Tokyo-based designer Shiro Kuramata. There’s certainly a sense of magic to his Feather Stool, with its wisps of yellow and white plumage suspended in an acrylic block. Kuramata won early acclaim as the creator of more than 100 Issey Miyake retail environments, beginning with the brand’s first Tokyo store in 1976. Like the fashion designer, who died in 2022, Kuramata was innovative in his use of materials, producing chairs and sofas in translucent glass and acrylic, or steel mesh with diaphanous profiles. He created many of his iconic designs in the 1980s, when he was an early member of the Memphis Group, including the Miss Blanche armchair, an acrylic throne embedded with synthetic roses and named for the character in Tennessee Williams’s 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Both pieces, while heavy, give the impression of weightlessness. — E.M.

De Cárdenas: It’s barely furniture, and I like that about it.

Haramis: I’m kind of surprised we aren’t choosing the more famous Kuramata chair, “Miss Blanche.”

De Cárdenas: I prefer that this is a gesture to a chair. If it didn’t have that [short rounded back], it wouldn’t be one.

Moore: It doesn’t look very comfortable.

De Cárdenas: Yeah, I don’t want to, like, watch the Super Bowl in it.

Romualdez: Maybe chairs shouldn’t be comfortable. At some point, you want your guests to leave.

Research editor: Alexis Sottile

Photo editor: Katie Dunn

Copy editors: Diego Hadis, Courtney Pressler

Nick Haramis is an editor at large for T, The New York Times Style Magazine. More about Nick Haramis

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