Nick Argyros opens the back of Kodak #1, the first Kodak camera made in 1888. The rare camera was loaned to the New York Botanical Garden last year for its "Alice in Wonderland" theme display.

Nick Argyros, 81, owner of the Photography Center of the Capital District on River Street in Troy, is trying to create a museum with a model and image of every type of camera manufactured since the 1840s.

Nick Argyros, who concedes his collecting crossed over into hoarding during COVID-19, shows off a vintage record that came with a photograph he purchased at an auction.

Nick Argyros looks over a large print of four couples from circa 1880 he bought for $10 the day before I visited from a vintage store in Bennington, Vt. “I can’t stop,” he said of his inability to cease purchasing items despite volunteers urging him to stop acquiring them.

Adam Putnam "practically lived here" at the River Street Photo Center for a few years during the COVID-19 lockdown and looks over some of the collections of images dating from the earliest era of photography in the 1840s.

Photographer and former volunteer Adam Putnam did his best to chip away at sorting and cataloging some of the tens of thousands of images at the Photo Center, but became overwhelmed by the hoarding clutter of Nick Argyros that got out of control.

TROY — Nick Argyros is the patron saint of photographic lost causes.

He takes your broken Leicas, your damaged Nikons, your obsolete Polaroids yearning to be salvaged for future generations.

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He has a weakness for outdated, forlorn darkroom equipment that languished for decades in attics or basements and feels an almost moral obligation to rescue old photography gear from the landfill.

In his quest to acquire one example of every type of photographic camera ever manufactured and an image created by each device, Argyros has turned the Photography Center of the Capital District into a full-blown obsession.

At 81, the pursuit now is more about the journey........

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