How much is representative?

Wave shapes, Scheveningen, January 2009

A good link from photostream to Mitch Alland's Bangkok Hysteria series. Looking through the series, led me back to a thought I was having last week: how should I choose photos for a book project?

The issue I was grappling with was the notion of giving sufficient representation to subjects. In a couple of projects I've been working on, the images aren't really singular, in that they are lone events. They are indicative of a wider trend. But how does one get that feeling across. Can I use one, and state that it represents something that can be seen everywhere, or should I prove the point with more images? Are 3, 4, 5 enough, or does that start to be too many.

Mitch's series certainly pushes the boundaries. i think possibly too much, in that case. Once I've seen three or four shots of pretty girls walking by, I've got the point. I've not got to the end of the set yet. I'm feeling that 400 images in a book like this is rather too many, unless there are a lot of montages - which would rathe detract from the quality of the images themselves.

It's a tough issue to deal with.