A Day At The Museum

On my recent vacation, I had the opportunity to visit several museums. I happen to have my camera, but really had no interest in taking pictures of the paintings, which, in my mind, just detracts from experiencing them. But after enjoying a good many of them I needed a break and a few thoughts came to me about what photos I might be able to make that could be interesting.

The first thing that came to mind was the idea of a continuation of my "Mural Project", that is, taking photographs of segments of paintings and/or trying to combine them in some way. Here is an example of one such segment, but what I would do with them remains to be seen. These are ideas that are just forming. Can anyone identify the painter :)

Then, as I sat and watched what was going on around me, it became clear that many people, perhaps even the majority, weren't looking at the paintings as much as they were photographing them with a cell phone. In many instances people weren't even looking at the paintings except through the cell phone screen as an intermediary. Which got me thinking about Elliott Erwitt's fantastic series photographing how people look at art in a museum called:

Museum Watching

I'm usually a bit shy about taking photos of people I don't know.  But they were so engrossed in their cell phone shots that it was easy!  Nobody even noticed. Of course, they probably presumed that I was doing the same thing they were and taking photos of the paintings, as opposed to taking photos of them taking photos of the paintings.

None of this may come to anything 'serious' in terms of it being a project, but they are fun ideas to play with. We will see!

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