These correspondences between photography and poetry are brought into sharp relief by photopoetry - specific examples of published collaborations between photographers and poets (sometimes the same person). Writer and artist S. J. Fowler describes the challenge of exploring photopoetry as follows:
To begin, we must ask ourselves what these mediums actually are, at heart, and then what they can be together? Finally, what is the purpose of their combination? What can they do together? And why is it relatively rare to see a cohesive combination of the two - with fidelity to poetry that isn’t just text, or discourse, or opinion, and photography that isn’t just pictorial?
-- S. J. Fowler
Sometimes, poets talk admiringly of photography, aspiring to its directness or regretting their ability to escape a 'snapshot' type of vision. Poets have also written beautifully about photographs, as in this example by Rilke: