On back-to-back walls, the two sets of photographs by MM Yu are more than just a sea of portraits. The multitude of faces and personalities that occupy an assembly of shelves are derived from a process that explores an idea central to the production of art itself—one that she believes is akin to the very nature of her practice, photography.

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In this project, which for her has become a constant undertaking, she uses Instax as an instant, camera-printable format to produce card-sized portraits, very similar in function to photo booths and photo kiosks. Here, she contemplates how the role of the photographer essentially takes on

that of the collector, where individuals’ faces are seemingly—and willingly—offered to the image-taker’s own library or archive of pictures. For her, there is no better way to explain this condition than by creating a series of portraits of people who also collect things, objects, and other fascinations. To demonstrate this, she proceeds to photograph two groups of subjects: art collectors and the artists they collect—in the same way that artists are also collectors and makers of images and things.

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This kind of meta-commentary on the nature of collecting tackles head-on the agents of this exchange. Through these portraits, it becomes a visual interpretation of a rather speculative concept and presents a rare insight into the veiled dynamic that is, in fact, integral to art’s ecosystem. During the show’s duration, MM Yu treats this as an ongoing, on-site project, continually adding new faces to her collection.

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This gesture provides a wholly new dynamic to the idea of collecting—whose collection do we recognize, and who gets collected: the producer or the acquirer of objects? No other work in contemporary photography has come so close to providing such a personal account into the “art world” we speak of in this way, and no other artist has pushed the boundaries and possibilities of portraiture as a collection of things.