This photograph is the second image in White's sequence, Sound of One Hand Clapping. White's concept of the photographic sequence, in which he ordered a suite of photographs according to a particular, frequently obscure, theme, was central to his work. His sequences presented an entirely new way of joining images that was both non-narrative but filled with meaning. Of Sound of One Hand Clapping, White wrote that it "originated from meditations on the Zen koan that reads 'You know the sound of two hands clapping, what is the sound of one hand clapping.' After several months of intensive work on this koan, I saw rather than heard any sound. . . the photographs appeared slowly over a two-year period."