Les Nymphéas
On this day I decided to visit one of my favorite museums, the Orangery.
This gallery was created as an oasis of silence just few steps away from one of the busiest and noisiest places in Paris - Place de la Concorde.
I go back there again and again for a kind of meditation. Unlike other museums of Paris, which are undoubtedly beautiful, this one has not a single unnecessary element in it.
Ideal lines of oval rooms, natural light, which, passing through a transparent roof, falls on perfectly white walls, and, of course, peaceful Nympheas of Monet, help to distract from outside world and concentrate on beauty.
More than once I have tried to express the magic of this place through photography, but this was the first time I came with a real camera.
To understand the feeling of this place, it is not enough to concentrate only on architecture, lines (that are beautiful in themselves and can be the subject of abstract photography). Following he path of street photography, I concentrated on people. Pretending to take pictures of the Orangery, I tried to discreetly include visitors in my composition, so that their poses, views would express the atmosphere.
I stopped at this photo because it has an unexplained harmony between the ideal lines of the oval gallery and the visitors that exist chaotically in this perfect composition.
The geometry of the room itself makes it seem as if the photo is opening from the middle to the outside. The main character, a young man on the foreground in the middle of the composition, is the only one who seems not interested in Monet's creation.
However, he is not a random passerby, who came to this place by pure chance. This guy was sitting alone. Sometimes he was taking his eyes off his phone and observing the Nympheas. He has spent quite a long time in this room. I think that he was doing exactly what this place was designed for by Claude Monet - taking a break from the external fuss, surrounded by the ideal and the nymphs.
Also on this day:
