[asoplata]

The last time I was at a crowded museum I spent roughly 20% of the time just trying to avoid getting in the way of people taking pictures. Everyone was taking pictures everywhere of all the installations. I considered doing so too, but realized 20 years too late that there are far better photographs of a work of art (or at least enough) by professional photographers with different takes/interpretations than I could do without decades of training (on average). If you like a piece, there's nothing to stop you from buying a print or downloading a picture. I get it that some people do it more for remembering "that time I saw it in person" instead of trying to capture the essence of a piece, and that's fine (that's why I used to take the pictures), but multiply the amount of time it takes to do that by every piece you come across, plus how much posting it on instagram/whatever/facebook removes you from "the zone", and I think it's just a different way of massively disrupting your attention when the MAIN reason you're there in a museum, for a limited amount of time, is to suck it all up. I'm sure many people don't get distracted by trying to take photos of all the art, but once I stopped and just focused on concentrating and nothing else, a trip became much, much more enjoyable, and even memorable.

[jdietrich]

Allow me to recommend the 1972 documentary series "Ways of Seeing" by John Berger. It is an astonishingly prescient examination of our changing visual culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk&list=PLlhSx0L1hp...

[branchless]

There is also a book of the same name. It's very thought provoking.

[asoplata]

Will def check it out, thanks!

[logicrook]

I agree with basically everything you said, yet I take quite a few pictures during my trips; a cheap phone shot that takes as little time as possible, that may be awfully blurry and with horrible colors, but that is enough to get the relevant information. Which is:

- Get a quick access to references that are mentally organized (because of the trip), without having to take time to actually gather the pictures.

- The specific element might not be photographed, or not possible to find at least. Maybe it's the design of some doorknob that's really great, in the middle of the countryside. Good luck finding that on google. Even some painters in the rijksmuseum are impossible to find on the web, so...

- Nothing existing picture may be satisfying. Maybe the specific arrangement of shapes works best from a very specific point of view. Maybe it's because of the lightning conditions. There are many potential reasons.

- You can use the ref without fear of copyright infringement (well, orwellian states would differ, but nearly).

[DerKommissar]

I went to the Louvre last year a few days after Christmas which I assume is not tourist season (first time in Paris). It was packed, and the Mona Lisa was surrounded by a sea of people 10 feet thick, most of them waving their phones around in the air on selfie sticks.

[skywhopper]

I think it's like this all the time. There's a reason they put it in a dead end hallway. The worst for me in this vein was going to Versailles, and being there at the same time as a big tour group of people, seemingly all of whom had a digital camera, an SLR, and a camcorder (this was in 2004...), and all of whom had to capture every significant artifact in each room and then move on. None of them were looking at the things except through their cameras' lenses and screens. There were so many of them that they made the tour pretty miserable for the rest of us.

[Coincoin]

I thought it was pretty funny. I took a great picture of the mass of people fighting each other to photograph the Mona Lisa. The ones with the iPad are the dorkiest.

[moray]

There is no such thing as a "no tourist season" in Paris

[awesomerobot]

I went to The Louvre and instead of taking a photo of the Mona Lisa, I took a photo of the crowd taking photos of the Mona Lisa. Much more enjoyable.

[shalmanese]

Except there are now so many photos of the crowd surrounding the Mona Lisa [1] that maybe it would be a more productive use of your time to take photos of the people taking photos of the crowds around the Mona Lisa.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=photos+of+crowd+mona+lisa&sa...

[dTal]

Your Google search has such a photo[1], and I actually really like it.

Actually on closer inspection she might just be taking a selfie. Which would also be ironic in a different way, as neither the Mona Lisa itself nor the crowd would be in shot.

[1]https://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/07/29/arts/SUBMUSEUMS/S...

[woliveirajr]

Ohh, almost meta-meta-photos of Mona Lisa!

Could get better: the museum could place some camera over / behind the paiting, and we could get pictures on how Mona Lisa sees those photographers

[awesomerobot]

A+ suggestion

[yoavm]

You should try that at Pisa. https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Travel/Pix/pictu...

[hodgesrm]

I've been there. The people pretending to hold back the leaning tower are more entertaining than the tower itself.

The pose incidentally seems to be some sort of universal human reflex. When we visited there were at least 100 people in the same position while their friends took pictures. They all seemed to be having a good time.