Artful Living
For my latest project, I decided to take pictures of people in the world’s best, most crowded and popular art museums in New York, Paris and London. For many of us Art Museums are understood to be sacred places where we view the art on the walls with an utmost respect, bearing witness to artistic expression, and gazing for seconds or maybe minutes, but often in complete silence. Through photography, I am interested in uncovering how people observe or interact with art when captured unaware. I want to see what I can find that might surprise us.
You won’t find people posing in my photos. When I capture them, I try to remain invisible. I use the camera as my tool and guide, making sure I do not stray into my subject’s eyes; I want to remain an anonymous observer of the observed. I consciously keep a distance, protect his autonomy, and he willfully ignores me. My process is dependent on time and timing; I often have to wait for just the right moment, going from museum gallery to gallery, looking at those who are looking, making dozens of rounds around the museum until I find just the right combination of elements.
I am thrilled to find people when they perfectly blend into the art because of their outfit; or when their expression is particularly unexpected, or when their body dynamics reveal an unforeseen humor. Suddenly, they become part of my art. At the same time I don’t want to dismiss people who are strongly attached to their phones, who are taking selfies, or who are plainly bored at the museum for they, too, are interacting with art on their own terms.
When I take pictures, I experience a state as if everything around me is a theater, and I am a spectator watching from the sidelines. It provokes my gaze, gives me creative energy and inspiration for a new quest. “The search” is probably the dominant interest in all my creative work. To keep up with the search I am motivated by new artistic solutions, storylines, timelines, little noticeable or completely “invisible” people, things, phenomena. To look for the dynamics of certainty, beautiful emotions, witty moments that meet my ironic gaze; I strive for each photograph to have its own story.
Edis Jurcys
