Paris in July

I have been to Paris once before, about ten years ago in November.  I was surprised at the number of tourists this time around in July.

Here is the square in front of Notre Dame not long after we arrived in the city.

Click to Make Bigger

There is a big line to get up into the bell towers on the left of the frame, just outside of the frame on the right is a line of people to get into the cathedral proper.  There were not a lot of lines last time I was here.

Our first full day in Paris, we went to the Louvre.  Below is the lobby area under the Pyramid.

Click to Make Bigger

The hall and stairway leading to the Nike of Samothrace.

Below is the hallway outside of the room that contains the Mona Lisa.

Click to Make Bigger

When I was here previously this hallway was almost empty.  There were people with easels set up copying some of the paintings, which is a common teaching exercise.  Setting up an easel in this hallway would be an exercise in futility with this kind of crowd.

One thing that was interesting was the behaviour of people with their cameras.  I am not sure if this is a new thing because so many people have digital cameras now, or if this always happened but I did not notice on my last trip because there were not as many people.

Below is the crowd in front of the Mona Lisa.

Click to Make Bigger

There was a mob of people pressing to the front of the crowd with their cameras to get a picture of the painting.  Most people would move on as soon as they had a picture.  To me, this seems like camera is stopping the experience of seeing the art, or that the picture of the thing is more important than the thing itself.

In general, I know that no picture I take of a work of art is going to compare to the actual work.  There are a lot of technical and aesthetic reasons for this.  The colour will not be the same, I will not be able to get the camera parallel to the work which causes distortion, it is not bright enough to allow a shutter speed that will result in a sharp picture, etc.  In some cases the work will just not translate well to a two dimensional medium.  This is obvious with a sculpture, but it applies to a lot of paintings as well.

Below is a picture of David's painting of Napoleon's cornation.

 

Click to Make Bigger

This gives some sense of the size of this work, but the canvas still does not seem as large in the picture as it does in reality.  Me taking a picture of this painting with a hand held camera is not going to give me what I would call a good picture.  A good print of this painting, that addresses some of the concerns like sharpness and distortion I mentioned above, will still not convey the sense of scale.  This painting is huge.

We experienced the same thing at the Musee d'Orsay.  I did not go to the Musee d'Orsay on my previous trip, and this was my first real look at a lot of impressionist paintings.  It was interesting to me to stand back and look at the painting as a whole, and then get close to really examine the brush work.  It is something difficult to explain, and may not be for everyone, but for me it was a wonderful experience.  Most of the other people there seemed to walk up to a painting, take a picture, and move on to the next painting to take another picture. 

At one point I was standing and looking at a VanGogh work, when I felt an arm brush up against mine, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a hand holding a camera creeping up beside my head.  I heard the shutter sound, and the camera slowly receded.  However, examination of the resulting picture in the lcd must not have been satisfactory.  Moments later the camera again slowly moved up beside my head, and another picture was taken.

I suppose in some cases people just want an artifact to document where they were and what they saw.  In other cases I think people are not sure what to do when they look at something, so they take a picture of it.  Personally, it seems like the camera is interfering with the experince.  It is interesting.