Photo of Katharine Graham surrounded by men becomes part of the book “The Only Woman”

The wooden-walled conference room has a sterile quality, and the men in soft suits seated around the wide center table are eerily alike, as if they’re duplicates.

In one photograph, taken at a high-profile corporate meeting full of men, there is one exception—a woman with short, curly hair sitting at the far left.

Taken in New York City in 1975, the portrait of former Washington Post editor and eventual CEO Katharine Graham is just one of countless images that follow a similar visual formula: the only woman in a composition of men.

It is now featured among a collection of such images, in the book “The Only Woman ” (A Única Mulher, in the live translation), by documentary filmmaker and first-time author Immy Humes.

“The Only Woman ” is the culmination of a years-long research project that Humes worked on after making a visual connection between two images.

The first was a 1962 photo of American filmmaker Shirley Clarke, who was often (incorrectly) touted as the only female filmmaker of her time, central in a circle of male creative types.

The second was a 1951 group portrait of 15 famous Abstract Expressionist artists — including Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko — with a single woman, artist Hedda Sterne, behind her on a table.

Humes explained in a phone call that she became “obsessed” with Clarke’s image. “How was it for her? What difference did it make in her life that she was the ‘only woman’?”

Soon, Humes couldn’t unsee the pattern, finding pictures of the “same constellation” everywhere, she said. She has collected images of scientists, comedians, athletes and politicians, among many others, from the mid-19th century, when photography became popular, until today.

“It started to get almost weird,” she said. Graham’s photo intrigued her because of the image’s history. The formidable editor had inherited the Washington Post after her father and husband died.

She never thought the paper would fall to her, according to Humes’ book, but she ran the paper through an era of major reporting, publishing the Pentagon Papers and investigations into the government of former President Nixon that would lead to his resignation.

She became the newspaper’s first female editor and later CEO. She was also the first woman elected to the Associated Press’s board of directors.

“She’s obviously being honored for being put up front,” Humes said. “In this case… the woman has a place of honor because of her exceptionality because she is the only woman.”

That’s not the case with all the images, and Humes found himself categorizing them as he worked on the project.

“There were different ways to become a ‘unique woman’. Either you were a queen…or you were the great, great pioneer,” she explained.

“And in some cases, women have gained access to male-only spaces because of their jobs as maids, secretaries or sex workers,” he added.

Humes notes that as society evolves away from strictly gendered work, these images become more salient. This makes the weirdness of each image even more pronounced.

“It starts to look absurd in our eyes — it starts to look comical. The further we get away from it, the more we are able to see it in a different way.”