Published by the University of Texas Press in 2009, Keith Carter’s *Fireflies: Photographs of Children* gathers a sustained body of work on children and the imaginative worlds that form around them. Its 168 pages bring together new photographs and images drawn from Carter’s earlier books, including “Fireflies,” “The Waltz,” “Chicken Feathers,” “Megan’s New Shoes,” and “Angel.” The result is not simply a survey of childhood as a subject, but a concentrated account of how one photographer has returned to it over time.

Carter’s method gives the children a role in constructing the pictures. He often asked whether they had something with which they wished to be photographed. That invitation—a small but consequential transfer of agency—allows objects, animals, clothing, and gestures to become the beginnings of stories. The photographs occupy a space between observation and invention: the children remain particular individuals, while their chosen companions and surroundings open onto dreams, private rituals, uncertainty, and play.

An accompanying essay locates this attention within Carter’s own childhood in Beaumont, Texas. His memories of woods, creeks, sights, and sounds connect the photographs to an adult act of recollection without reducing them to nostalgia. Joy and wonder coexist with the less settled emotions of childhood. What adults overlook or smooth into sentiment is allowed to remain strange, anxious, and unresolved.

For a photobook collection, *Fireflies* is significant as a focused consolidation of Carter’s recurring engagement with children, combining earlier images with work newly assembled for this volume. The substantial square-format hardcover gives that subject room to accumulate across the book, while the essay supplies an autobiographical counterpoint to the photographs. Its value lies in this dialogue among remembered childhood, collaborative portrait-making, and the independent imaginative lives of Carter’s young subjects.