The Worst Museum Visit Of My Life

Dear Backrooms,

Today, I wanted to talk about one of the worst museum experiences I have had in my life.

I felt this most clearly when I visited the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, where Monet’s Water Lilies sit across two small oval rooms that he had planned very carefully himself. These were not just paintings placed into a museum. Monet thought about the whole experience: how people would enter the room, how the panels would surround them, and how the light would fall across the paintings.

The rooms are not even that big. They are probably around the size of a three-room Singapore apartment, which makes the whole thing feel even more intimate. You are supposed to sit down, keep quiet, and let the paintings slowly come to you.

Monet gave these paintings to France after the First World War as a gift of peace, and even when his eyesight was failing, he continued working on them until the end of his life. Before walking in, the instruction on the wall was simple: please keep quiet, sit with the work, and let the room stay peaceful,

Then I walked in, it felt like a fish market.

People were talking loudly, moving from one panel to another like they were trying to finish an errand, taking a photo, checking the photo, and then moving on before the painting even had time to register.

I noticed a young woman standing in front of one of the large panels, dressed beautifully, posing for her phone while her father stood behind her and took photos for 45 full minutes. I know this sounds harsh, but I could not stop thinking about how stupid it felt.

What could have been a good afternoon between a father and daughter in Paris became a transaction. It annoyed me because he was no longer really her dad in that moment. Their relationship, at least for those minutes, became camera man and model. Also, they were blocking my view.

Monet’s Water Lilies, something he spent decades working on, became a background for someone’s cultured weekend.

I am not saying we should not take photos. But I have to be honest. The sandwich I photographed last month is probably not something I will remember years from now. What I will remember are the photos I took with people, on days that actually mattered, during moments that felt worth keeping. Birthdays, celebrations, parties, etc.

This is not some high-level European observation.

The same thing happens in a place like Joo Chiat too. You dress nicely, go to a cafe, sit down, and then the food arrives. Before anyone eats, the phones come out. The sandwich gets moved around. The coffee gets pulled closer to the plate. Someone says, wait, one more with my 1 year old brown beautiful dog. But our dog is not looking at the camera, so wait, one more. Then another one. By the time everyone is done making breakfast look like breakfast, the actual breakfast is just sitting there, slightly cold.

And for what, really?

I just think we have become very, very, very bad at living life.

True happiness is about building good relationships, and that has been proven in research studies all over the world. Not a nice IG feed.

If someone comes to Softerfields, spends their day meeting people, listening properly,  watching a film, and actually enjoying the room, and nobody posts about it, I think that is pretty damn cool.

It means people were engaged enough to not reach for their phones every five minutes.

Of course I am not pretending we can run everything on mystery. People need to know Softerfields exists. But I do think there is something worth thinking about when you keep taking, and taking, and taking, and taking. And this doesn’t just apply to photography.