Alice Frati-Rumsey and her mother, Charlene Frati, looked overwhelmed as they entered the University of Maine Museum of Art’s main gallery on Friday afternoon. With wide eyes, they surveyed the scene: thousands upon thousands of photographs taped up like wallpaper.

Then, Alice found what she came for.

“That’s mine,” the Bangor woman whispered as she pointed to a close-up color image of a daffodil.

Frati-Rumsey was one of countless shutterbugs, amateur and professional, who submitted work to “Millions Taken Daily: Photographs from Everyone and Everywhere.” Starting in April, the museum put out a call for entries. Soon, pictures started flooding in from all over the world.

The resulting show, which is on view through Oct. 6, includes snapshots and formal portraits, artwork and castoffs from as nearby as Bangor and as far away as New Zealand.

“We just wanted people to send us their stuff – we didn’t care what it looked like,” said Gina Platt, the museum’s education coordinator. “In the end, we used most of them. We might’ve had to eliminate some because they wouldn’t fit into the space we had, but we didn’t eliminate any for content. People were pretty good.”

“Millions Taken Daily” has been in the works for quite some time. Museum director Wally Mason was inspired by William Eggleston’s book “The Democratic Forest” – and “democratic” is the best way to describe this show. A snapshot of a woman holding a pumpkin shares wall space with a professional portrait of a woman in a wide-brimmed straw hat. On another wall, a giant, solarized state trooper shares space with a ’70s era bride and a one-eyed dog.

Individually, the photographs are intriguing. But this show is less about individuals and more about the collective experience. Together, these images form a bold visual statement that invites reflection.

“When you look at the pictures of people it just brings you close,” Frati-Rumsey said. “It’s not that I know them, I’m just drawn to them and that’s what I think you want an image to do. … It sort of makes me wonder, ‘Where did this one come from?’ It makes me want to know more.”

Platt, who along with Mason is a fine-art photographer, would agree. She has been collecting stray photographs – the snapshots and negatives that people throw away – for years. “Millions” includes interesting contrasts. There are artistic images that professional photographers took specifically for this show. There’s also “the stuff that never made it to albums” – pictures where someone’s head is cut off, or someone’s thumb got caught in the lens.

And there are a few striking commonalities.

The show includes two pictures, taken by two separate photographers, of two different men talking into a banana like it’s a telephone. There are vacation photos and children’s portraits, loads of babies and bundles of brides.

“I can’t tell you how many pictures there are of killer whales,” Platt said. “Anyone who ever went on vacation to the Miami Seaquarium or Sea World sent us their pictures.”

Nancy Rohan of Key Largo, Fla., came to the museum Friday to search out the 15 photographs she sent. She summers on Mount Desert Island, and when she saw the call for entries online, she shipped out a shot of herself and her husband in front of a huge American flag. The couple used the picture for their post-Sept. 11 Christmas card.

“I tried to include my family,” Rohan, a retired photographer, explained.

When she pointed to a picture of her niece, Platt smiled.

“That’s your niece? She’s adorable,” Platt said. “We just love her.”

During the course of hanging the show, Platt and the museum’s preparator, Steve Ringle, were taken with certain images – the banana-phone guys, the Roswell, N.M., Wal-Mart fa?ade and a towheaded toddler who looks like a miniature adult, to name a few.

“You keep coming in here and you always see something new,” Platt said. “This really shows the things we all have in common. The more you look at this, the more you feel attached to these people, the more you feel like they’re pictures of your own.”

Millions Taken Daily

Where: University of Maine Museum of Art, 40 Harlow St., Bangor

When: Through Oct. 6

Admission: $3, free for members

Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Monday-Saturday

Accompanying shows: ?Being Where: Looking into Landscape,?

?K-12 Art from our Community?

Information: www.umma.umaine.edu

Contact: 561-3350