W. Eugene Smith / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images - Never before seen image from Country Doctor

It was looking through an anthology of old photography and seeing W. Eugene Smith’s iconic “Country Doctor” essay that first showed me the power of narrative photography. If you haven’t seen the series, look now. Life.com has just published a short selection of images from the shoot that have never been published before. As with many collections of previously unpublished work, many of the shots lack the intensity and emotion that have made “Country Doctor” such a seminal work. But, they offer a deeper look into the methods of the photographer–at times more literal, at times less so–that gesture toward different visual approaches to the story.