This two-volume collection captures the words, thoughts, and images of cinematographer Christopher Doyle.

Volume I, Why I Am Not a Painter, features 18 collages, five videos, and over 100 poems, thoughts, and snippets of dialogue by Doyle. For Doyle, language is a way to review, refine, and reform. His words come from the creative experience and the cinematic space—they are what the process of film-making suggests to him.

Volume II, Of the Film, contains 30 texts and over 60 photographs taken by Doyle onset of films like In the Mood for Love and Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai), Temptress Moon (Chen Kaige), Hong Kong Trilogy (Christopher Doyle), Hero (Zhang Yimou), and The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch).