Throughout the modern era, photography has been enlisted to classify the world and its people. Driven by a belief in the scientific objectivity of photographic evidence, the systems utilized to classify photographs have shaped modern visual culture. Accompanying the exhibition The Order of Things: Photography from The Walther Collection, this book investigates the production and uses of serial portraiture, vernacular imagery, architectural surveys and time-based performance in photography from the 1880s to the present, bringing together works by artists from Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.