People collect a lot of strange items. I have a friend who I haven’t seen in a while who collects fans. It’s interesting to see how fans have evolved over the years.
In essence, photography is a means of collecting things that would otherwise not be feasible. Take birding for example. You could keep dozens of species of birds, but it would be far more practical to collect photos of them. Trees are another interesting subject, but it’s difficult to add a fully grown tree to one’s collection. And architectural subjects like buildings and bridges? Forgetaboutit.
Photography even allows us to take possession of things that don’t actually belong to us. Owning a Ferrari is pretty much out of the question for me, but I have dozens of pictures of them. We can even keep down the clutter by taking photos of objects we seriously need to part with.
This practice of collecting images should probably not be confused with the actual act of taking pictures, or of making photographs. I make the distinction, because while I may only have the opportunity to take a snapshot of an object for reference, with more time I might also make a photograph of the object to capture its essence. There’s a huge difference between the two; one is photography, and one is not. Not that taking snapshots is not worthwhile. It’s just great that we have a name for this aspect of photography that puts things in perspective.
Collecting images is part of the magic of photography.
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