When I visit a museum with my camera, I am less interested in works than in those who watch them: I enter a floating and concentrated state similar to the one I know well when I photograph in the streets. With the difference, however, and in size, that in museums, visitors do not walk with a hurried step, lost in their dream and their loneliness, but wander from room to room under the eye of masterpieces. How is this freedom exercised in the encoded and guided space of the museum? It pleases me and amuses me to photograph: admiration, fatigue, boredom, incomprehension, indifference, letting go … feelings and attitudes That generate the museums are multiple and random, whether one is amateur of art or neophyte, child or adult. Some even take the opportunity to kiss or fall asleep! The museum is decidedly a very photogenic place.
Bernard Chevalier
