Q. What’s a typology?

A. Photographic typology is a way to study, classify, and categorize things that are similar. It also helps to show a range of variation in like things.

In the 1960’s, Bernd and Hilla Becher began photographing industrial structures of all kinds (water towers, furnaces, gas tanks, silos, etc.) which were rapidly being dismantled. They recorded, with incredible precision, the many grand and minute similarities and differences in these structures, and a strangely beautiful but vanishing industrial landscape.

Recently, Taryn Simon created a fascinating typographic study, called Contraband, of items confiscated by customs at JFK airport. Probably the weirdest and most unusual array of items you will ever see.

You may see more typologies in a day than you realize. As seen below, they are often used by advertisers.