And how they were mounted, with at least 8-ply overmats, on what appeared to be 11 x 14 mat. In other words, you approached the postage-sized image, bent at the waist - and looked.
I mean - I like small images, say 5 x 7 inches, even some nice contact from a 4 x 5 inch negative, but this was teeny-tiny.
On top of that - I seem to have some juvenile streak in me that finds all these people gaping at images in this (to me sterile) environment - silly. Large museum and gallery space always does that to me.
How I would like to see people walking by with their pets; maybe cotton candy given out to the kids. I confess that this is my own fatal flaw and it takes a lot in a photograph to grab my attention. I did have that experience once at a Brett Weston exhibit - a sense of awe. But it is rare for me.
Possibly it's some sort of "class" thing since I get the giggles quite often if I go to the opera, or eat in a fancy restaurant. I always wish the Marx Brothers would come traipsing through knocking over plates nouveau cuisine on them. They should have made a movie called, A Night at the Museum, although they came close in an early movie where a famous painting is stolen in a mansion.
This inability to be appreciative at the gallery is part of the same impulse that draws me to photograph in such places.
I do not have the same problem with viewing paintings in such a space; though it does crop up once in a while and I can't help myself:
Afterwards we sat at a coffee shop and chatted, mostly about things photographic - and that was more fun. A woman across the way fascinated me and I probably took about ten shots of her sitting alone at a small table - but very animated expressive face.
There must be something mildly absurb about a photographer who doesn't really enjoy looking at photographs. My own house is pretty bare as far as photographs on the wall go. The part that I like is "the capture." That is what interests me and what is the most fun. And - I've said this ad nauseum in the blog but I believe that is a hunting instinct that has no other outlet. Even the word that is used in digital: capture suggests a hunting experience.
So now here you are where the other side of the hunt has been completed. The big institution has collected these trophies and hung them like lifeless heads on a bare white wall in the modern version of gilded frames which is to say non-obtrusive. I'd like to see some of these images in big ornate, carved wooden frames (see painting above).
