La Cour du Musée des Beaux Arts
Few places offer respite in the center of a bustling city quite like the courtyard at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, France. On any given day, I duck in for lunch, for the shade on a hot day, for a quiet conversation. Just outside is the chaos and spectacle of the Place Terreaux.
The museum is housed in a former Benedictine convent, dating from the 17th and 18th century; and, the courtyard was once the abbey’s cloister. Today, the courtyard is replete with rich plantings and sculptures by Rodin. Cugnot, Delorme and others. A most preposterous fountain greets visitors as they enter the space. It appears to be composed of a cast-off sarcophagus, a random base of a column and remnants from a Gallo-Roman artifact.
I trained my pinhole camera on the site to capture the spirit of the place. Using a shallow focal distance, I maximized distortion as a way of transporting the viewer to a different realm.
