@Photo4f: This is likely due to memory management on your iPad. What happens is after a while, you may do some tasks that require the iPad to free up memory, so it’ll close the app in the background, causing that app to go through it’s startup process. Unfortunately it sounds like when the app goes to sleep (for the lack of a better term, I don’t know what they call it), it doesn’t keep track of the individual item you were looking at and, instead, will just go back to the original section that you were in instead.
This confused the heck out of me until I read your post. For me it was even worse than that, since I feel like the current Photos app UI/UX is confusing with how it starts back up after going to sleep. I thought I never used “Collections” and was mystified why my photos app would randomly startup in Collections. However, what I would do is just use my Library’s photo stream or look at photos in an album. Then that’s when it hit me after reading your problem… that must be why it starts back up in Collections. Even though I access my albums using the left-side gutter menu, always avoiding the Collections section. Apparently, at least as far as this startup process is concerned, all albums are nestled under Collections which explains why even though I’d never access that page directly, the app would seemingly randomly startup there, which I found jarring. However, the problem with this is that prior versions of the app used to always open on the Library photo stream and now I feel like I’m taken out of context and have to do extra work as well, but for a slightly different reason as you (whenever my app sleeps and has to start back up again).
IMHO, it should do as you expect; it should just return to the last photo you were on, no matter what. For me, if it couldn’t do that, I’d strongly prefer it to return to the Library photo stream like it used to. But alas… 🫠
