Four Reasons for Photographing from Inside: Museums
On Telling Stories and Making Art in Museums – A Street Photographer Perspective
Creating photos in museums can refresh your street photography.
It can also be a training playground if you’re hesitant about street photography and photographing strangers.
Let me explain why I do it frequently.
It’s a controlled environment. You have time to think, not just react, as often happens in the chaos outside.
You have time to observe and tell unscripted stories of people interacting with art.
You can create your "own art" by putting visitors in dialogue with the exhibition pieces.
It’s a paradise for creating fine-art photographs. Clean architecture offers beautiful backdrops, reflections, and lines for framing subjects.
Street photography is often viewed as capturing unposed moments that reflect the human condition in outdoor environments, but this is not always the case.
Truly, street photography can happen in any public place, even at home, as long as it highlights spontaneous interactions, emotions, and the environment.
A museum is one of those (inside) public places where photography, including street photography, is usually allowed.
Museums are quiet places where you can practice without feeling miserable about missing that moment because you weren’t quick enough or feared photographing strangers.
Over there, people are busy and won’t notice you or don’t care — which happens 99% of the time inside or outside, anyway.
I often visit museums at home or while traveling. There, I struggle to balance viewing and appreciating art and local culture with my street photography craft.
With enough time, I usually come out with both rewards.
Let me share examples that I trust will make it clear that museums are a rich playground for your photography.
Tell a Story
Street photography thrives on observation.
Inside a museum, you can document stories through how people relate to art. You can create layered narratives similar to what you’d find outside on the street.
Candid stories of people captivating others with stories about what they see and feel, bringing art to life through context.
Or stories about the unseen.
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.
Diane Arbus
Exquisite art pieces, combined with clever observation points of view, are powerful.
I took advantage of a high vantage point in the bewitching photograph below, made in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon.
“Look!”
Create Your Piece of Art
A museum offers unique opportunities to put art in dialogue with visitors.
As a street photographer, you can play with contrasts, aligning people’s poses or expressions with artworks to create powerful, ironic, or humorous juxtapositions.
You bring your art to life through meaningful framing of what you imagine.
It’s great fun and easy.
You just need to pay attention.
Who knows? Maybe you can:
Frame an “Electricity Man”.
Capture a “Ray Woman”
Or perhaps “Light Speaking People”
Make Fine Art
Street photography can be quite a hectic activity.
You may need to run because you see something that can work.
You may need to crouch to achieve that dramatic point of view and catch the sun in the right spot.
You may need to act as a human tripod to energize your photographs.
But sometimes you want to step back. You want to shoot but not be in the middle of the action.
You want to slow down.
Think about how you can transform the mundane in front of everyone’s eyes into a creation that reflects your personal interpretation.
You want to transcend mere aesthetics in a photograph by evoking emotions.
Museums provide an excellent opportunity to elevate your street photography to a Fine Art conceptual level, allowing for a slower and more thoughtful approach.
These cultural oracles often showcase impressive architecture, providing backgrounds, reflections, and frames for your performers. The clean lines and symmetrical spaces can enhance the composition of your photographs, resulting in pleasing, well-balanced images.
Let me illustrate with photographs.
The "Matter of Time" is a monumental installation by American sculptor Richard Serra. Located in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, it consists of massive weathered steel sculptures that fill an entire room (!).
From a high point of view, you can see a view from a balcony looking down the room. Waiting long enough, you can make a pleasant street photo of a couple who navigate through twists in time. However, I’m sure other photographers have done this already.
But you're in a museum.
You can slow down time and hunt for more meaningful street opportunities.
I decided to go down to the room and get close, very close, to one of the rusty steel walls of Serra’s masterpiece. I composed from my waist level to include the sci-fi structure of the room’s ceiling in the frame. The ceiling lines played in tandem with the dark steel negative space.
Then it became a waiting game, playing with scale as the delicate couple took their positions before I released the shutter.
There's a contrast between human scale and architecture, organic and inorganic subjects, and a merging of space and stillness.
You can also pump up the level of abstraction as I did in the photograph below. The glass and metal structure of the stairways connecting the museum levels was the perfect background for an entangled man.
Take Your Time and Luck Will Come
Museum personnel, especially gallery guards, can struggle with boredom.
The photograph below has a funny yawn effect. It's an example of unexplained parallels. It was made in the Pompidou Museum in Paris.
Things move slowly in a museum. If you’re patient, you have time to observe.
With patience, opportunities will come your way. Rapid reactions and unshakable optimism are also key!
The photograph above exemplifies what you can make when your antennas are fully out in a museum.
Appreciate art, but don’t forget that you’re a full-time photographer and artist ;-)
Shooting in museums allows for a quieter and more thoughtful exploration of street photography while still offering the rawness and spontaneity you always seek as a street photographer. Take your time and always remember to bring your camera!
Nice! 👏🖤📷
Nice read and great photography, Fernando