One pairs artists and writers to think about this question. Eight photographers—Marco Breuer, Thomas Joshua Cooper, John Gossage, Trevor Paglen, Alison Rossiter, Victoria Sambunaris, Rebecca Norris Webb and James Welling—were asked to submit one image on the theme of minimalism. Eight writers—David Campany, Teju Cole, Christie Davis, John D’Agata, Michael Fried, Darius Himes, Leah Ollman and Laura Steward—were enlisted to respond to those submissions, each paired with a specific image. The results offer a probing assessment of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s maxim: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”