Motifs of extraction: Photographic images on book covers

This article addresses a very particular domain in the area of peritextual studies- that of the illustrated covers which clothe some photographic books. It seeks first to analyse how this type of peritext is distinguished from peritext in general. Next, it attempts to understand the peritextual differences between the major subcategories: 'photographs in books', on the one hand, and 'photographic books', on the other. It concludes with an analysis of one particularly well-known example- Robert Frank's The Americans.