Fotoalbum met kabinetfoto's van bezienswaardigheden in Parijs c. 1870

This is a photo album, likely from the late 19th century, containing cabinet cards of Parisian landmarks, created by various photographers. Notice how the album itself, despite its simple exterior, acts as a vessel of memory. Like the Renaissance memory theaters designed to hold images of knowledge, this album is designed to hold images of travel and experience, and each photograph captures a trace of a moment in time. Consider the act of collecting and arranging these images. It mirrors the human impulse to categorize and make sense of the world, akin to creating one's own personal atlas, each page a journey, each image a symbolic waypoint. In its time, the album was not merely an object, but a personal cosmography, a microcosm reflecting the collector's world. These images are a potent reminder of our perennial quest to capture, preserve, and understand our experiences.