Filming Mona

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so by way of penance I’m offering not a review but a brief rant to keep you entertained. Enjoy.

It was my birthday last Thursday and I was brought to Paris for the weekend. Neither of us had ever been properly before so we had an understandably enjoyable time walking for miles around the city. What we didn’t do, however, was take photographs of anything - the simple reason for this being that we both forgot to bring a camera.

It’s a surprisingly liberating thing not bringing a camera on holidays. It was nice to walk around the Jardin du Luxembourg without taking a photo of the funky boat sculptures currently dotted around the park. When we crossed the Champs Elysées there was no mad scramble to whip the camera out of my backpack and recreate an image of the Arc du Triomphe at the end of the tree-lined avenue. And there was no desire whatsoever to film, as I saw one gentleman doing, the Mona Lisa.

We went to the Louvre on Friday night and made straight for the Denon wing where the Mona Lisa hangs, primarily so that we could say we’d seen it and then go off and enjoy the rest of the museum. As to be expected there was a large crowd gathered behind the railing that uniquely protects this painting, itself shielded from would-be knife wielders by reinforced glass. Whether or not the Mona Lisa is worthy of all this idolisation is another matter entirely (it’s not, by the way), but what caught my attention was the volume of people taking photographs of her.

Bear in mind that this is now one of the most mass-produced images in the world. On top of this, any photo taken by a civilian visitor to the Louvre will be done so at an unflattering distance and almost certainly skewed by the museum lights reflecting off the glass. It will not be a good picture, but still people will try. I admit that had I remembered to bring a camera I probably would have joined all the others, but in not having one I realised how ridiculous and expendable an awful lot of holiday snaps are.

Now, I can see the merit in taking a photograph of somebody standing next to the painting, if you want to argue that photographs count as a testament to having been there, seen that. But how many photographs, really, do you have at home that you’ll never look at again? I know I have at least twenty pictures of the Pantheon that I could probably do without. And those were taken before I had a digital camera. I have about fifty digital photographs of a single pride of lions in Kenya – and at the time I was actually trying to restrain myself from living through my camera.

Of course this isn’t limited to Leonardo’s painting. There was a woman in the Musée D’Orsay who systematically documented every single artwork she came across. Surely actually looking at the sculptures, drawings, paintings, and architecture would have been more rewarding. But then, I don’t know, maybe she was going home to recreate a miniature Musée in her garage.

Leaving the camera behind was the best thing we did over the weekend. We’ll just have to just actively remember all the events of our four days in Paris, and if that means that our memories will be rose-tinted and unrealistically pleasant and idyllic, so be it. But at least I won’t be making anybody watch my rolling footage of a still life.