In 1946 Frederick Sommer began to photograph composed arrangements of found objects. He came to the conclusion that things which at first might not appear to have anything in common can still ‘meet and work together’. He used distortion in his assemblages to create unlikely connections between works of art of different periods and traditions. In Virgin and Child with St. Anne and the Infant St John , Sommer combined a lump of metal salvaged from the wreckage of a burned-out car and a fragment of a children’s book illustration to echo the famous drawing of the same name by Leonardo da Vinci.