They have the power to steal your breath, provoke tears. They might overwhelm and inspire you, bring you to your knees, even.

But they won’t. These moments passed into oblivion, unfixed by the camera — snapshots that went unsnapped. Now, they’re in a book: a photography book without pictures.

The collection, “Photographs Not Taken,” edited by Will Steacy, features the testimonies of 60 photographers who recount the moments that slipped from their photographic grip, either because they couldn’t take the picture, or wouldn’t.

The notion of photographer as globe-trotting adventurer, at the scene of historic events recording every important moment, is reassessed in this collection. If anything, these photographers lament that their task prevents them from fully engaging with the present. As Lyle Rexer wrote in his introduction, it’s a dilemma of to be or to shoot.

For some, to take a photograph is to remove oneself from the moment. Jim Goldberg recalls using the camera as a mask, something to hide behind while his wife was in labor. At the moment of his daughter’s birth, however, he tossed it aside. “When Ruby’s head crowned,” he wrote, “there was no way in hell I would use a camera and miss those incredible moments.”

For Elinor Carucci, becoming a mother meant declaring war on the photographer in her. “I had to choose between photographing and mothering,” she said. “And when I did choose photography, every photograph became a second of guilt” — a second she didn’t spend fully immersed as a mother.

“Even if it was just for 1/125th of a second, I wasn’t available in that 1/125th of a second.”

For others, the untaken picture is a moment that they couldn’t bring themselves to steal. Erika Larsen wrote of working on a project about the family of a girl, Julie, who committed suicide at age 17. Going into Julie’s room with the girl’s father, Ms. Larsen had a heart-wrenching shot in front of her, but she hesitated. “I could see the image, but I could only hear his sobs and feel my own falling down my face,” she wrote. “I held my 4×5 at my chest, ready to shoot, but not able to. I put down the camera; the moment was his.”

It’s an interesting collection, as these photographers reveal quarrels with the ethics or morality of taking a picture. Tim Hetherington examined the differing gut reactions that stirred him after taking a graphic photo of a dead Liberian rebel and a dead American soldier in Afghanistan. One photo was important to include in a book, but the other gave him pause.

“My hesitation troubled me,” he wrote. “Was I sensitive this time because the soldier wasn’t a nameless African? Perhaps I had changed and realized that there should be limits on what is released into the public? I certainly wouldn’t have been in that questioning position if I’d never taken the photograph in the first place, but I did.”

It’s not all heady internal debates or moral decisions not to shoot; occasionally, the moment simply slips away. The collection is a reminder of the limits of photography as a document of experience. “Sometimes, you just get an instinct when to put the camera down and be fully present,” Nadav Kander writes.

Sometimes, experience is all you’re going to get out of that moment.

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