Published by See-Saw Editions in 2016, Michael Philip Manheim’s *See-Saw: A Sampler of How Once We Looked* is a concise return to the photographer’s archive. Manheim presents the book as the first sampling of documentary photographs recovered from files accumulated over a life devoted to photography. Its subject is therefore twofold: the appearances preserved in the pictures and the later act of looking back at them.

The word “sampler” is important. Rather than claiming to be a comprehensive survey, the book gathers images Manheim himself found memorable. This retrospective selection places past observation beside present judgment: photographs once made as documents are reconsidered through distance, recollection, and the photographer’s sense of what has endured. The title’s “see-saw” suggests that movement between then and now, between what the camera registered and what an older viewer recognizes in its record.

Nostalgia is stated openly on the cover, but the project is more disciplined than a simple appeal to sentiment. “How once we looked” can refer to outward appearance, yet it also raises a question about ways of seeing—how people were regarded, how a photographer attended to them, and how archival pictures change when encountered later. The book’s documentary basis gives that reflection weight: memory is anchored in images made in the world rather than reconstructed after the fact.

At 36 pages, this paperback is deliberately compact, closer to an edited proposition than an exhaustive retrospective. For collectors concerned with documentary practice, archives, and the photobook as a form of self-reassessment, its interest lies in that concentration. It records Manheim’s own selection from his earlier work and preserves the interpretive frame he placed around it: not a complete career account, but a focused statement about photography’s ability to carry appearances across time.