when the quest for the perfect shot takes precedence over contemplation of the work

Magda still remembers it vividly. In 2021, her visit to the Centre Pompidou in Paris for the retrospective of American painter Georgia O’Keeffe was extremely painful: “It was impossible to look at a single painting without someone walking past me to take a photo!” The anecdote will come as no surprise to regulars: “photographer visitors” have invaded museums. While the practice is not new, the advent of smartphones has multiplied it: 79% of visitors to museums in France immortalized their visit in 2022, according to a study by the Ministry of Culture.

To support this phenomenon, a charter was even issued in 2014, recalling common sense rules, such as not using a flash or telescopic arm, or taking a photo of a member of staff without their consent. Today, museums widely accept this state of affairs, such as the Beaux-Arts in Lyon (Rhône) which even encourages visitors to share photos taken in the galleries on social networks. They see it as an opportunity to deepen their knowledge of the public’s expectations. Nevertheless, in the most popular establishments, it is sometimes appropriate to remind people in an educational manner of some principles of visiting together, proof that the practice continues to sometimes cause tensions between visitors.

Look, memory and emotion

Especially since photographers are not always clear about their motivation: “I ended up going to see a sixty-year-old woman who was compulsively capturing images to ask her why,” Magda continues. “She didn’t know what to say.” For the most part, it’s simply about capturing a form of memory, Christophe admits: “I take photos of works of art like I do of a holiday site. I also immortalize beautiful mechanics in arts and crafts museums.”

Keeping a record, and not necessarily of the most famous works: “I only photograph those that have generated a reaction in me,” reports Suzie. “I want to preserve this emotion and I feel like I’m materializing it.” This approach is based on both the logic of the museum and that of the smartphone, explains Géraldine Lefebvre, director of the MuMa in Le Havre (Seine-Maritime): “In an establishment where the gaze is essential, photographing via a smartphone that has become an extension of our arm and our eyes allows the visitor to capture something ephemeral, a moment that will disappear, to take away knowledge.”

Among the photographer visitors, some keep their photos of paintings, objects, sculptures for themselves. Their phone or computer then becomes a journal to refer to, as in a collection approach. Which is not contradictory with the fact of buying a postcard in the shop.

For others, the desire to share predominates. On social networks or in a more intimate circle, to share one’s emotion, one’s admiration for the aesthetics, or simply to invite a loved one to go see the exhibition, or even offer them a virtual tour: “I happened to take photos to show them to my mother who could no longer travel,” confides Claire, who was rather annoyed by this practice. “I was creating a kind of report in order to share information, a discovery, emotions with her.”

Through this, Francine, who cannot imagine a visit without photos, wants to “bring culture and history into everyday life. I send my photos to my friends when I know they particularly like a particular artist or field. I also post them on the family’s WhatsApp groups to strengthen my bond with them, to show my affection. With this wink photo, I think of them.”

An intimate vision

You can capture a painting or sculpture to look at it later because you are visiting the museum quickly with a child, to be inspired by it during crafts, to use it during future drawing or painting classes, to display it as a wallpaper or even print bookmarks…

This diversity of reasons is to be compared with the multiplicity of personal journeys in museums, explains Serge Chaumier, museologist: “Within an exceptional space supposed to contain the heritage of humanity, each visitor creates their own journey, their personal and imaginary museum. Photography is one of the ways of appropriating places. Moreover, it perhaps allows us to exercise our gaze more, because we think about our framing.”

For the researcher, we must therefore be careful not to judge this use haughtily, especially since we do not know what the visitor is photographing. It can be the entirety of a canvas of course, but also details, the label, the scenography, the furnishings: “I remember a woman who only photographed the flowers in the paintings in the Louvre. She created her own catalogue.” Frédéric confirms. This sixty-year-old sometimes zooms in on a detail of a painting that he does not necessarily like: “The framing can create a new abstract work.”

A reflection on the shooting that thus twists the neck of the preconceived ideas suggesting that photographer visitors would not know how to enjoy the moment. On the contrary, our interviewees confide in taking the time to look at the painting, its texture, the artist’s touch, all this thickness that a smartphone will never transcribe but that it can allow us to remember.

Are institutions adapting their scenography to this photo mania? Not directly, even if the enhancement of a work obviously contributes to its photogenicity. “The reflection is rather focused on the gaze in general, the direction of circulation, how one perceives a room when entering it, where one naturally looks,” reports Adeline Collange-Perugi, curator at the Nantes Museum of Arts (Loire-Atlantique). An institution that, like others, could find a new advantage in this fashion, suggests Serge Chaumier: “Due to the lack of archives, we do not know how museums were arranged at certain periods in the past. These personal photos will constitute excellent documentation for historians and museologists who will be interested in the beginning of the 21st century.”