#BMWArtGuide by Independent_Collectors | Describing the beginnings of his interest in collecting contemporary African photography, Artur Walther, the founder of the Walther Collection (WaltherCollect), said the following: ’It was a difficult step to move beyond what is familiar to me.’ It was a step Walther took nonetheless, and, in doing so, demonstrated a defining feature of his approach to collecting art — a determination to see collecting as a form of education rather than a mere pastime. ’I struggled with each individual picture,’ Walther tells his interviewer, ’I had to get out of myself and my preconceptions, borders, and limits.’ The words Walther uses — struggle, difficult, limits, borders — are not words that one might immediately associate with art collecting, but, as Walther has explained, collecting is not about simply amassing a horde of objects, but about research and context, discovering why an image is significant, and what it may tell viewers about the time in which i...