A meditation on the nature of photography itself,  The Book of Shadows brings together eighty-eight anonymous photographs spanning the 20th century, drawn from the collection of Jeffrey Fraenkel. Edited and with an introduction by Fraenkel, and selected from a collection of more than 2000 prints, the volume represents "the most tenacious, obstinate, and downright sublime of the crop."

The book includes an astonishing short story, "The Man Who Lost His Shadow," written in 1813 by Louis Adelbert von Chamisso.