Wenders is promoting an exhibition of his Polaroids. Film directors used to take a lot before the arrival of digital video cameras.
I was early into digital, in 2001. My first smart media card was 4mb, and an 8mb card was £60 or so. The batteries didn't last long, so it had an optical viewfinder. There was about enough power to review enough shots to get about 36 decent photos. So it turned the average snapper into a competent amateur.
By 2003, I was up to 6 megapixels, interpolated. I used a 1 Gb compact flash card, and was tending more to movies. You had to make the film in the camera to a large extent, so it was a bit like 8mm you could review.
These days I use a camera with a bit-rate of 50 mb/s, and 128Gb of card gives about 10 hours of footage. Editing then becomes a work of sculpture, hacking away the surplus material, rather than building up a picture from the scant images you have.
So I'd say that it's the combination of memory and codecs that characterise all digital photography. I think it does make it hard to compose a photo-essay. A good photographer should only take the shots they need.