Key points

Photo collecting is shaped by our biology and culture.

Photo collections personalize emotional and historical narratives.

They represent an almost instinctive desire to gather the world into our hands and keep it.

Indianapolis Artist Source: Thomas M. Mueller Photography

Olivia, our granddaughter, said, “ If there isn’t a photo, it didn’t happen .”

This may be a bit extreme, but to some, photography freezes time with an immediacy no other medium can match. A photo is an imprint of something that truly exists: a person, a place, or a gesture. To accumulate such images is to collect moments that survive.

The neuropsychology of collecting helps explain why photographs, in particular, exert such pull. When individuals engage with pictures that evoke emotion , whether jo

See Full Page