To the best of my knowledge all Macs come with a 'Pictures' folder /Users/me/Pictures, which I have been using for years. For reasons I cannot explain, Photos App does not just simply read this folder in by default, but wants to 'import' either single photos or entire folders. I want to avoid duplicating all my photos because Photos App does not look into a folder I want it to look into. I also have organised my photos the way I like, and so, duplicates aside, I do not want to either recreate the tree or keep my photos inside a Photos App specific folder.

So, how do i go about telling Photos App that my photos are in /Users/me/Pictures/*, so that everything remains in /Users/me/Pictures/* and is NOT copied elsewhere, and NOTHING gets duplicated?

I was thinking of making symlinks if that is a way to do it, but before trying I thought of asking.

I do NOT use iCloud, if that matters, my question is 100% local SSD pertinent.