Category Archives: photography

Photography –> Engagement?

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I wrote a rather annoyed post against photographing works of art in museums. This was mainly a rant against cell-phone camera gaggles who cruise through the museum capturing blurred images of masterworks without really looking at them, not to mention getting in my way and seeming to miss the point of the museum: to look at art.

The blatant hypocrisy of this view, as I take photos in museums, is not lost on me, nor is the elitism of my quibbling justification that I really look at the art and try to be aware of the people around me.

To use my two exemplars for the last post, MoMA and Met have different photography policies. MoMA is quite good about letting it’s visitors take pictures without flash. The Met does not allow photography at all. The Met’s policy may be the best, as quite a few people at MoMA accidentally take flash photos. This could eventually harm the painting. Anyhow, photos of paintings are so unimpressive in quality compared to the original, it’s almost a waste of time to take one. (And did I mention the gaggles wielding camera phone?)

On the other hand, one of our compatriots here at Art Ravels suggested to me that they could be taking them to share with friends and relatives who will not have the opportunity to see them in person. To which I say, touche. Another commenter pointed out that he liked taking photos of installations and sculpture because he felt he was able to bring out different facets of the work. To which, again, I say touche.

Most interestingly, it was suggested that I look at Thomas Struth’s Museum Photographs, which document viewers reactions to art pieces. These well-behaved museum goers, even the children sitting on the floor, all seem to be looking at the paintings and not taking photos. But then again, all they ever do is stand their and stare. This got me thinking: more than a sign of visible approval, is taking a picture the one way a visitor can react when presented with an art object? Maybe people in museums should be able to do more, before the atmosphere turns into something as quiet, reverential, and ignored as the one below.


Art as it is most often presented is a take, not give, kind of thing. If you want to react to it, you end up removed to a different room miles away typing on a computer into a blog or some such tomfoolery. Perhaps photography is a sign of engagement. Do you think picture-taking is a way of responding to and interacting with the art?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were more?

Against Taking Photos in Museums

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People should not take photographs in museums. This is me doing a 180 degree revision of my opinion. I mean, I myself take them and show them to you here. I think to limit cultural distribution is silly and that to take a flashless pictures of something in a museum can do nil amount of harm. I now know differently.

I now know that it is a scandalous practice detrimental to museums. On visits to the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the crowds so much as blown away by the number of people who only looked at the art through a camera lens. Pause, click, pause, click they walked through the museum documenting their trip meanwhile getting in my way, accidentally taking a photograph with flash, and generally showing little interest in the the art. They were more oblivious to the people around them as they tried to get a good shot.

Really, should photographs be allowed in museums at all? Do you take photographs? Does photography interfere with your enjoyment of art?

Cowboys, Migrants, and Signs at MoMA’s Into the Sunset exhibition

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Chevron, Stephen Shore

Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West, on at MoMA through June 8, has been called an ‘unprecedented look at more than a century of changing myths and cultural attitudes about the American West, with over 120 photographs, from 1850 to the present, by photographers including Robert Frank, Dorothea Lange, Cindy Sherman, and Stephen Shore.’ At least, this is how MoMA describes it. The statement is more or less true, but it disguises the insidious fact that the exhibition is (as you might have wondered from the photographers listed) rather an odd agglomeration of images.

Untitled Film Still #43, Cindy Sherman

The curators wished to use the simultaneous exploration of the West and the development of photography to make a point. I find that it offers little illumination other than photographs have been taken of the West. The exhibition is organized thematically. After attending a lecture at MoMA yesterday, I can now inform you that that the exhibition is meant to take you through different facets of the mythic West such as landscape (unspoiled potential), people (seeking destiny, identified by trade such as cowboy or Indian, individuals), transportation (railroad, Manifest Destiny, highways signage). If anything, the exhibition suggests the plethora of ‘West’s we Americans cherish: rugged plains being settled and immigrants, cowboys and Indians, Yosemite natural park and Hollywood. There was an undertone of falsity and disillusionment with these ideals, especially in the latter part of the exhibition.

The exhibition might not suggest a unified concept of photography in the West and it might not impress upon you the development of photography itself, but it does prove to be an evocative experience. From Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath in Dorthea Lange’s photos to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road Again in the highway and signage images of the 1950s and 60s, I was reminded of the lone individual going mobile to follow his manifest destiny under the enormous setting sun. However, like that last sentence, the exhibition never gelled into more than a pastiche of cliches.