I’ve written about electronic images a long time ago, and it is now time to follow this up with some thoughts on the sort of images we keep in albums or on the wall. Many things I about electronic images (you'll find a link to that blog entry at the end of this article) is true for paper photographs as well: we are, after all, visual beasts and images speak more than a thousand words. Have you ever tried explaining something complex to someone and felt the need to draw a map or a diagram? There you go: proof positive.

While that practical application of images and drawings is something that comes natural to us, why is it that we give so much importance to photographs?

I had been looking at shopping as the thing that creates clutter in the living space, that unwittingly makes us accumulate things. I was also under the impression that shopping was linked in some way to collecting, and left it at that. While that is certainly true, I have come to understand that it only shows one aspect of a much wider picture, that includes a relationship with consumerism and the effects of marketing, a certain feel-good factor, aesthetic needs, and very simply: engrained habit. It takes the shape of replacement activity (e.g. to repel emotional distress), a hobby, a group experience, a reaction to physical stimuli (e.g., going to the supermarket when hungry), and many others.

As you can probably see by now, shopping is much more than ‘going out and buying what I need to survive’: it’s become a way of life for many and affects us all to various levels of influence. But how exactly does shopping do that to us?

Have you ever spent a whole day doing things and find that come the evening you cannot remember what it was exactly that you did and can find only scarce evidence you had even been active at home?

This means that either you’ve done lots of little things that will make your life a little easier, or you have started lots of things and not brought them to an end. It is likely a mix of both. But if we are brutally honest, the second type is probably more common than the former. Sometimes that is the way it is, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this. If, however, you get the feeling that this is the way it is most of the time, wouldn't you ask yourself if there is something else going on?