I've been experimenting with the possibility of collecting images for some time now... it all started many years ago when I still had the habit of cutting out images from magazines. Sometimes I cut them out entirely, selecting just a few parts, to build a large repertoire of dedicated images (positions of hands, feet, faces, eyes, trees... etc).
A friend of mine, Anna Marchi, helped me to create a small binder of clippings, organized by subject. She worked at the time in the municipal library of Imola.
The remains of these clippings stayed, sometimes for months, in my studio waiting for some use, until one day I had the idea of using them to build collages.
If anyone is curious to see the result of these collages, they can look on my instagram, at collage collection.
Speaking of binders... I had the opportunity to do a little research on Ray Bradbury on Youtube and I found many interesting videos about him and his work as a writer. The video below in particular is very beautiful, as it makes us see a little bit of this writer's universe and how he constructed his science fiction stories. There are some scenes in his work studio full of things and so many binders, but so many... (in the '50s and '60s there was nothing like the Internet and the resources we have today in terms of information networks). Taking advantage of the tip... one of his most beautiful books in my opinion is The Illustrated Man (The Tattooed Man), 1951, which was adapted for cinema in 1969.
Nowadays we have several tools that could very well replace my image binder like Pinterest].
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pinterest is the sharing of collections between users... in this mode you can follow the collections of several users and incorporate them into yours and vice versa. It's actually a big common binder organized by themes (described by the album owners).
From my point of view as an illustrator, getting to know the 'imaginary' of other artists, illustrators, common people, who by hobby or profession collect images is very important. This constitutes an immense repertoire of references for new ideas, to understand where your imagination collides or coincides with that of others... everything in terms of images.