Pictures in Museums (and in other cultural institutions)

Dear reader, this following article is an attempt to translate the original article in French but also some elements of the French law with English words… but, I am totally aware that laws are different; that’s why I am studying hardly the British one now… Time for me to integrate everything… but if you have resources to point out, I will be more than happy!

Everyone heard, at least once, in a museum, an exhibition or during a visit “No picture (please)!”. In reaction to this peremptory sentence, 3 different ways of answering:

1. the docile visitor says in a whisper “oh sorry! I didn’t know…”
2. the rebellious who pretends that s/he hasn’t heard and continues to take pictures (ok, this is especially true for French, me the first)
3. most of us groan, pretend to put away our camera and, as soon as the Museum keeper is not looking, shoot the wished object… So wished that actually we don’t really know if it’s the masterpiece that attracts us or defying the ban…!

When I started this article, I hadn’t imagined that it would take so long to write! Of course, in the meantime, I changed of country, and I lived many changes in my life but there are not only these external reasons. Indeed, I begun this article because of my accumulated irritation as Visitor of Cultural areas (in particular when, invited to see the exhibition about Etruscans by the Maillol museum, our host had to say, in each room which masterpieces we couldn’t take in picture because of the loaning museum!) but also during my different chats with my colleagues of Museums who explain me that this interdiction is a brake imposed by photo agencies for their cultural and public actions in their own institutions (see the example below). I thought I would write a short analysis, use pros and (falsely) cons but, of course, it was more complicated than that. A the beginning of this year, there were a lot of different articles on the subject, especially with the very interesting #MuseumSelfie experiment launched by @MarDixon. Actually, if it’s true that the question of royalties and copyrights (more largely, intellectual property) and the use by the Public of their pictures are both essential, I think we also need to think further and examine uses, tools and media and wonder why pictures in Museums turn everyone upside down.

I Why photography prohibition?

Example of a non permitted picture of masterpiece: the painted 19^th reproductions of frescos, that belong to the Vatican Museums, exhibition Etruscans, hymn of life, 19.09.2013-09.02.2014, picture by Hélène Herniou

• flash damages masterpieces

Too bad, this is wrong! We have known that ten years at least and it is still repeated by the French Museums Research and Restoration Centre (C2RMF) that the flash of non-professional cameras doesn’t damage the works of art (contrary to those of the professional cameras). Oh… that means that the flash of your smartphone or compact digital camera or even your SLR will not be the reason of the deterioration of the masterpieces (some institutions do that unfortunately perfectly by themselves). So, why is flash prohibited? As a way of prohibiting photography, but not only, a large part of museums and cultural institutions allow taking pictures without flash. Of course, without flash, you often have an unsatisfactory picture at the end, which forces you to buy a reproduction, the postcard or fridge magnet, the poster (but only if it is a “real” masterpiece) or even, in a big, expensive and (only?) aesthetic coffee-table-book, if you are lucky. But visitors don’t take pictures to save money! This is the reflection of cultural institutions but it reveals how far these marketing persons are from the reality of a cultural institution. Visitors can take the photo of their favourite work of art and buy the reproduction in the shop –if this one does exist!

Another explanation of this lack of flash is an un-negligible comfort for the professionals who work all day long in the rooms, as the Museum keepers explained to me. The total ban of picture taking is an easy way to avoid flashes.

• Pictures are forbidden for royalties reasons.

In this case, we are facing 2 different situation:

1. The masterpiece is handed by a private owner and/or the private owner handles a masterpiece whose royalties are still due to the heir(s). In France, royalties have an incredible time lapse: 75 years after the death of the artist or even 85 years if s/he died because of the war

Or, other situation: this masterpiece has never belonged to the public domain (because it has been always belonged to private hands).
The problem is that even if the owner is private, if she/he decides to exhibit this masterpiece to Public, s/he also wants the masterpiece to be watched by the public (it’s besides often the main motivation why a collector would prefer to purchase a masterpiece rather than another). When the masterpiece belongs to the public domain, the prohibition to take pictures –clear appropriation gesture by the Visitor– is unjustified.
Royalties and their so silly long lengths are also an important point of discussion because these lengths are against the diffusion of the masterpieces and often a deep abuse from the author and (first of all?) from the copyright holders (and companies that handle these copyrights for the heirs). The example of the Centre Pompidou is noteworthy: for the new website of the institution, the idea was to present (more than on the former website) the different masterpieces held in the institution with their notes. For this reason, the institution tried to negotiate with the copyright holders and companies that handle these copyrights for the heirs the right to show on the website the masterpieces that belong to this public institution (and paid by the public money). Maybe teams were not allowed to fiercely negotiate these permits but the result, that a museum of such an international scale isn’t allowed its own collection on its own website is just totally crazy! Moreover, if you reckon that the royalty holding companies constantly try to charge the institution for every new publication (printed or digital) of one of its works of art, we are now in an universe where Ionesco becomes the voice of reason!

2.   The work of art belongs to the public domain and royalties have expired

There, I have none explanation! It’s just inadmissible because if the work of art belongs to public collections it is because it was bought with public money (by a public purchase or by donation for tax relief. Besides, it is in reaction to this foolish and unbearable situation that the #OrsayCommons movement was born, against the totally grotesque politic, illegal and intolerable from the part of the Musée d’Orsay.

 2) Why refuse ?

Have museums even wondered “why do visitors take pictures/ do selfies in front of the masterpieces?” The question of the quality of the reproduction is absolutely not the point; often, the quality of the lens is not optimal as the quality of their digital (even analogue) camera is not the best. And we’re only speaking here of technical, not artistic quality of the picture (often blurred because caught too quickly, light not favourable, …) So what?! So taking a picture is an appropriation gesture and this can be for personal use only, for professional reasons or also for scientific reasons (I need the reproduction of this work of art because I work on it, I wish to analyse it), for sentimental reasons (I feel emotions with this masterpiece), aesthetic reasons or also for social reasons (as you can read underneath, I saw the Mona Lisa, I am cultured, …)

Right now, imagine visitors who come only occasionally into museums or those who have negative a priori about museums (but ready to change their opinion): their ceremonial, dusty objects, where we have to enter as in a church, where we owe respect, silence and seriousness. Why do people think that museums are dusty? Dust is, of course, just an image (they well know that museums are cleaned and if they knew how often, they would never use this metaphor again because, definitely, it’s not possible!) but, nevertheless, this feeling of lack of life, of fulfilment, of this “pleasant surprise” which is the salt of the life, still exists and this feeling that museums don’t breathe and are places without life persists… and this prohibition of picture taking certainly doesn’t help to improve this feeling! Though, photography is life! Look all these pictures of friends, families, pets, food or drinks on Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook.

For sure, museums are not the only one guilty, copyright holders are often the real brake to the point of absurdity as we can see with the following examples (we appreciate that Google offers for free works of art and the possibility of wandering through corridors of museums but doesn’t allow to save pictures…)

Old picture of Paul Klee in his studio… with 2 pictures painting which have been (recently) blurred…; Tate, article of the 16^th December 2013

When new photographs are taken and blurred because the copyrights are still active, it’s stupid but well…but, newly blurring an old photograph because there are paintings with active copyrights is simply totally crazy!

We have to think: if companies are so often the major brake for a public and free open access it’s also because we let them do it! The Centre Pompidou has tried to take this problem in hand and negotiate; if every museum acts like this, maybe it could work and allow a new step…Imagine a league of the cultural institutions against this system?! Or even, let’s dream!, a department of the ministry of culture that supports this cultural institutions league and talks with a clear and strong voice in this debate. Let me clarify one point however, I do not mean that I am against royalties, every job deserves a salary (even if, nowadays, this notion is quite beaten down, especially in the Cultural sector!) but there is clearly abuse. And this abuse is often used as a screen behind which it is so easy for many decision-makers of museums to prohibit this area of freedom that belongs to everyone, from visitors to the internal teams. This prohibition of picture taking is certainly not a true brake for people! The Shakira example (see below) is characteristic I think: no visitor will ever stop taking pictures but you risk that these visitors will no longer be your Visitors because they were too badly received and will become your best agents…against your institution! You cannot stop such a deep wave, so old and so anchored in mentalities because you want to make more money or because it is your prerogative or again because you think it’s a lack of respect to your Institution. Never forget that this gesture is an appropriation work from your Visitors, they transform something that is exterior of their lives or habits and integrate it in their ownship thanks to this change that they operate through the camera. Maybe this last point is unacceptable for some people who don’t want photography or photographic reuse in the cultural institution. And yet, if we observe collections they are full of re-uses and hijackings! It is clearly a bet to accept pictures and their usage (and diffusion!) because we cannot manage what the Visitors will take or what they will do of these pictures but here is the point: control. We should not master, we should understand why, how, who and then how we can use this in the interest of the institution, the artists, the history of art and culture.

3) Why take pictures?

I am not the first one to ask this questions or even to answer to it but these answers are often spread across different academic articles or books; I think we need to remind them again and add some new elements.

Why take a picture? The first answer is to remember and actually the great advantage of photography is to be as an illustrated and (almost) objective note-pad of a moment, a person, an object. This photography is consultable as you wish and showed to others. Two recent American studies show that participants who took pictures to remember are the ones who remember the less… But we don’t know the conditions of these experiments: how long were they, how was the surrounding environment for participants,… Even if it’s true, when we see large groups of tourists turn up into museums and how much little time they have to visit the collections and the hearing stress (following the guide, hearing the chats of other group members and visitors, the museum keepers, …), taking pictures is the only way to remember what they saw and come back to these memories, slowly and quietly afterwards, and enjoy these pictures.

Nevertheless, do we really do it? Let’s see how many pictures you have of your holidays and how often you looked them? There is, of course, in this statement of consultable extern memory, also the argument of sharing and adding a discourse on these pictures, recreating a story around these moments and explain to a third party a trip or adventures but often, these pictures are showed only a few times directly after the event, they are seldom sorted (year, areas, who, …) and put in a drawer that we open by chance later, re-discover them and forget them a new time. But, I think that, even if we only rarely consult these photographs, they are very important for two reasons: first they are the support of a social affirmation. Indeed, with these photos, we show that we have enough money to go to exotic destinations (we show often the pictures of the most interesting or exotic holidays and journeys), that we are cultivated, that we are courageous, adventurous, that we are posh, … Of course, it’s not necessarily made consciously… and I don’t think that it is the only explanation. Indeed, the pictures that we took during the holidays are not necessarily very interesting (yes, let’s stay in general and empirical experience): there are the highlights of an area (monuments which we should visit, even it is only to look from a distance) but there are also things that touched us, that challenged us, that we enjoyed, the kind of things we want to keep in memory, smells, feelings, … in a certain way, we are in the same logic as the Instagram pictures of food and drinks. And I think that the notion of competition inside a circle of peers or friends is present as much in Instagram as in the personal pictures. These reflections lead me to add another dimension: the pleasure that I share. If I take a picture it is to remember but also to show it to people, to show the picture but also a feeling; so I share also my astonishment (Human is mainly a sociable animal)…showing that I like something. Then we can say that photography is, to say it quickly, an illustrated “like”, a fortiori nowadays with the weight of Facebook in our lives. Besides, it is not a coincidence if Facebook bought Instagram…photography is a social object (physically or digitised), a signal.

It is all the more a signal as nobody is forced to take a picture. People who take pictures do it when and if they want but also how they want. There are photographic techniques (how to capture and how to develop or treat) but we no longer need to master them to obtain our photos; we depend no longer on a specialist to take these pictures or develop them, thanks to the digital cameras and all the more the smartphones, we now have the possibility to take and share pictures easily, quickly and with many advanced tools. Finally, even photography can be a very complex object and with truly complex and arcane messages without cultural background, the majority of pictures are simple and understandable in all cultures throughout the world.

4) And what do visitors say? And what do cultural structures tell them?

This publication from the Musee d’Orsay webmaster is just incredible! Yes yes, you read well “We have to thank Shakira for this unexpected worldwide advertising… even if photographs are forbidden in the galleries of Orsay”!

Try to forget this awful mistake from the point of view of marketing, advertisement or communicational, because the Musee d’Orsay webmaster was in front of a picture that is all the more normal nowadays for all visitors from all around the world, he was obliged to apply the stupid and absurd institutional policy by this post and act as a teacher who punishes a school child!

My question was “why take pictures” but not “why take pictures of ourselves”? Self-portrait has been done by many and for a long time but as we no longer need technological expertise, self-portrait has soared.

“Self-portrait has a long artistic heritage with artists who cannot be ignored, such as Rembrandt, this compulsive self-documentarist, Courbet who represented himself as an attractive bohemian and Van Gogh, this fragile genius, with a bandaged ear. Today, the genre belongs to everybody who has a camera. #Selfie is as omnipresent as the number of smartphones and as diverse than Mankind itself” (Yannick Vernet)

What is a “selfie”? For those who don’t yet understand all the subtleties (why don’t we use “self-portrait”?):

“A photographic self-portrait, especially one taken manually (not using a timer, tripod etc.) with a small camera or mobile phone.” (Wiktionary) or “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website” (Oxford dictionary)

Of course, this question of the photographic self-portrait joins the “why take pictures” question but goes further in my opinion. Actually we see again these two criteria of social affirmation and freedom in the action. We assert our rank in the society and say, for example “I have enough money to be taken in picture in front of a lot of champagne bottles, to go to this country, I have education and knowledge,… these elements are particularly true when we of public personalities (or persons who have a kind of cult of the personality surrounding them) because they are people who claim their rank but also do self-advertising. In our society, individuals have gained a place so important, this omnipresence of the image of self that can be mastered and shared is not a surprise. The perfect command of the image is also a very important element in our world where picture is omnipresent and something in front of which we are often passive. Now, we have the power (even though we can discuss this point) to be active, master one’s image (even if this point can also be discussed). People feel like masters of their own image, able to claim it and choose. Even if it may be wrong, this is, at least from the point of view of the ethnology, a strong signal that we shouldn’t neglect, especially in the cultural institutions.
Apart from the fun side of the event (element that she always takes care to have in her actions), I think that Mar Dixon was perfectly conscious of these stakes when she launched #MuseumSelfie. Better than knowing, she used them to spread to a larger audience, give the occasion for Museum teams to do something else than the everyday work. What’s the matter if “stars” use #MuseumSelfie for their own advertisement, if magazines talk about the event, without any clue about what they write, if people see in this “Twitter trend” a challenge! On the contrary, play, use, spread! Results are here :

« #MuseumSelfie Stats Jan 23 09:30GMT
@Eventifier
5,591 Photos
9 Videos
23,778 Tweets
11,143 Contributors
@sharypic Photos 5,818 » (Mar Dixon, Facebook, 23rd January 2014)

This is a brilliant example of what cultural institutions can propose to their visitors and internet users: use their everyday practice that could potentially engage communities (isolated or a little more perennial) to share the same values or even, in the best case, enjoy themselves. Nevertheless, if more and more institutions begin to understand why it is important to accept connected Visitors, they are not aware of the ins and outs of this publicity. For example, in Paris, there is a group of Visitors that, every week meet each other to visit an exhibition or the permanent collections. This is the SMV group and their case is, for me, characteristic: this initiative was launched by two Culture professionals but is totally private. Now this event has been proving its success for three years, more and more museums invite the group to live-tweet their exhibition and, thus, do free advertisement for the institution. But the live-tweet was never an obligation but a personal reaction by the visitors; the aim of this group is well the atmosphere of this friendly group. Museums don’t understand this wish to meet around a cultural subject and share pictures and comments if they wish.
Of course, I use stereotypes not because I think that the world is all black or white but to help reflection and alert. By sharing what is done elsewhere in the world but also by collecting reflections, experimentations and good practices that we can read and watch with people like Nina Simon or Nancy Proctor or Samuel Bausson.
Several institutions have understood the importance of photography inside their collections and have imagined offering the pictures taken by the institution itself. For this, many solutions: host these pictures on the institution website. It was the choice of the Rijksmuseum (of which I write about underneath) which has created its own universe (a dedicated website) for the exploitation by the internet users of the Rijks collections pictures –in high quality please! This phenomenon of proposing high quality pictures from museums in a dedicated website knew its first “leap forward” with Google Art Project, the 1st February 2011.
Other solution: share these pictures on a social network, as Gallica does it on Facebook, with a lot of success, notably with its weekly appointment.
You can also use different networks to deliver different information because, yes, different (social) networks mean different ways of writing and sharing information… linking Twitter publications to Facebook timeline is to be banished! The great advantage with this solution is to deliver different types of information, with different points of view, as you do when you use storytelling in your actions, touch different audiences but also develop different aspects of your collections. An excellent summary of the presence and ways of using Pinterest by some institutions is done by this article and a pure condensed of best practices.
Finally, there are institutions like the Toulouse Museum that have decided to work not only with visitors but also with amateurs through a partnership with Wikimedia for the edition of the Toulouse Museum article, which means taking pictures in high quality and adding all the metadata and, of course, giving access to their collections and storeroom. Yes, taking a picture is not only a selfish gesture but can be also be done with the aim of sharing with as many people as possible, as wikimedians do, on their free database , under creative commons license.
This last point has been a strong claim for years, including in the cultural world. This phenomenon is so significant that some (not free) stock photos agencies or even museums push their pictures for free public use as we can see in this declaration:

“Getty releases second batch of Open Content images, more than doubling number available

The Getty today released 5,400 high-resolution images from the Getty Research Institute (GRI) through its Open Content Program, more than doubling the number available to the public for use without fees or restriction, bringing the total of available images to roughly 10,000.” [article here]

Comments on LinkedIn:
Kristin Reiber Harris • This is such exciting news. As an independent content developer (educational media for young kids) access to this kind of imagery is wonderful. There are so many kids and families who will never make it to the Getty in LA. I love being able to create content that introduces these families to this great art. Thanks, Getty. You join a host of other enlightened institutions doing the same thing.
Adam Mikos • At times it seems museums forget just how powerful these images can be when the public is able to make use of them. Kristin, your example is terrific.
Jo Van Hove • The images they ‘release’ are in the public domain since ages ‘available without charge to be used for any purpose’. The only thing Getty does, is to apply the law, giving the public their images back – so it’s strange they market this as a case of generosity…
Adam Mikos • They’ve gone well beyond simply releasing the images. The huge jump in downloads is marketing all on its own.

5) What reactions, what can we do?

Several reactions are possible. First of all, your own reaction: if you don’t agree you can say nothing and submit to this policy as you submit to the rules of society or groan (yes, typically French but not only…) or do something! Maybe the most famous reaction in France is the Orsay Commons movement. But there are other solutions to destroy this stupid policy that drive crazy the museum keepers who, obviously, do only their work. First solution is to form citizens committees to be proactive, as do lobbies, to move ideas and policies. In a certain way, the Creative Commons movement is quite similar to this target: this type of actions, by promoting pictures that are easily sharable and re-usable, free from royalties (where it’s only mandatory to give the name of the author) and putting the object whose picture is taken before financial interests and showing good examples, is making things go forward.

Other solution: that the movement comes from the cultural institutions themselves. For this, two possibilities:

• Work on a picture database, easily open to audience, as we can see with the Atlas database from the Louvre Museum or also, what attracted a lot attention on the beginning of 2013, the Rijksmuseum that opened its collections with high quality pictures. We have to notice how efficient is here the high quality of pictures because, through the “Rijks Studio”, you can create objects (mugs, poster, T-shirts, tattoos,…) with the entire picture/work of art you want or only a detail. Of course, some people criticise the commercial use of works of arts but frankly, I prefer to see a detail of a Flemish work of art that I chose than the Mona Lisa flip-flops that the Louvre Museum dares to sell! By the way if you take the internet user as a customer who has the choice to create its own purchase, this customer will navigate through the website (so through the database) to find the picture that has its favour, watch what detail could be the best one on its mug… Of course, it’s basic, it’s not history of art but when the customer navigates through the database to find the nicest picture, the most impressive detail for his/her colleagues, the customer look works of art, seeks to understand how it is made and then, the customer becomes a visitor! And let’s go further in marketing: if you record the navigation of the internet user you see where are the areas not visited by the internet users; why? Is it because the path is not clear? Is it because the topic seems to be too complicated for the internet user? From these questions scientific and Public Engagement teams can work on these points. Another good point of this recording: you see which are the most popular works of art and which ones are more often in personal galleries. Where is the point? Simply suggest other comparable works of art beside the famous ones for scientific or thematic reasons (understand a work of art with others that are comparable [or not!], a month with a theme,…). Thanks to that you understand what your public is interested about (because yes, your internet user is now a visitor) and this allows you to accompany them online as you do in situ.
• Try solutions with the royalties agencies to give back an open access to their own collections. In the field of fine arts and architecture, the action of the Centre Pompidou has to be noticed, even if the result is disappointing. We could imagine that it would be easier with the works of art of dead artists for whom copyrights have expired, but the stock photos agencies keep a close control on copyrights. This last element is all the more outrageous when this is a public agency and it refuses the right to use these pictures to the very structures that preserve these objects,!

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” Dorothea Lange

“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” Ansel Adams

LINKS:
1) Law

• Photography and the law, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photography_and_the_law
• Droit, photo et musées (II), 18 mars 2011, Jastrow: http://jastrow.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/droit-photos-et-musees-2/
• French royalties system: Droit d’auteur, Légifrance

2) About the prohibition on taking pictures

• La prise de vue au musée, Musée des Augustins, Pearltrees ; excellent group of articles from the Musée des Augustins about taking picture into museums (in French)
• French ministerial meeting around digital in the cultural sector, October 2013 (in French)
• OrsayCommons: http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/12/orsaycommons.php#.UmlwinBWxPE
• Post from the Musée d’Orsay against the Shakira picture, Facebook, 20th August 2012: https://www.facebook.com/museedorsay/posts/343339099082875
• The blurred photos on Google Art Project: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/collection/moma-the-museum-of-modern-art?museumview&projectId=art-project
• The invisible works of art on the descriptive notices on the Centre Pompidou website: http://www.centrepompidou.fr/cpv/ressource.action?param.id=FR_R-27ad3110b6cce374602b4b739081f66a&param.idSource=FR_O-27ad3110b6cce374602b4b739081f66a
• Tate blurred paintings on an old photo… http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/z-paul-klee-o-oeuvre-catalogue
• Charte des bonnes pratiques photographiques dans les musées et autres monuments nationaux, Ministère de la Culture, 14 juin 2013 (in French). Note, the 9th of July 2014, the French Culture Ministry launched an official convention about the visitor photograph (and a colourful summary)
• Post cast “La Semaine de l’Art n° 18 – 15/5/2014 – Invité : Philippe Bélaval” (in French) with the affirmation from the director of the historical French monuments to change the different policies (the historical French monuments has in charge different monuments around the country and all have their own policy about the photograph subject) toward one global favorable to photography policy (talk about this subject at the end of the post cast): http://www.latribunedelart.com/la-semaine-de-l-art-no-18-15-5-2014-invite-philippe-belaval

3) The photograph public

• Un soir, un musée, un verre, from 28th January 2011: http://legroupesmv.tumblr.com/
• Visiteurs photographes au musée, 2013, La documentation Française, sous la direction de Serge Chaumier, Anne Krebs, Melanie Roustan (pour lire le sommaire ; lire la présentation de Mélanie Roustan du livre), all in French (sorry)
• Histagrams, play with modern social networks as public Engagement action, from the 7th November 2013: http://histagrams.com/
• Selfie, la mode de l’auto-portrait 2.0, Lense, 6 novembre 2013, Mathilde Hamet: http://www.lense.fr/2013/11/06/selfie-la-mode-de-lauto-portrait-2-0/
• Around #MuseumSelfie :

1. Going Viral with #MuseumSelfie, @MarDixon, 26th January 2014, Mar Dixon: http://www.mardixon.com/wordpress/2014/01/going-viral-with-museumselfie/?fb_action_ids=10152175438736506&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=aggregation&fb_aggregation_id=288381481237582
2. Museum selfie day – in pictures, The Guardian, 22nd January 2014, Matthew Caines: http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/gallery/2014/jan/22/museum-selfie-day-in-pictures
3. #MuseumSelfie day : photographiez vous dans un musée !, madmoizelle.com, 22nd January 2014, Lady Dylan: http://lol.madmoizelle.com/diaporamas/museumselfie-day/
4. MuseumSelfie takes Twitter by storm as galleries create global self-portraiture, 22nd January 2014, Culture24Reporter: http://www.culture24.org.uk/art/live-and-public-art/art464738
5. Selfie : #moi (et la Joconde), Libération next, 22nd January 2014, Maud Couture et Florence Stollesteiner: http://next.liberation.fr/arts/2014/01/22/selfie-moi-et-la-joconde_974815
6. La boîte à outils du #selfie au Musée, DASM, 23rd January 2014, Sébastien Magro: http://dasm.wordpress.com/2014/01/23/la-boite-a-outils-du-selfie-au-musee/
7. Museumselfies.tumblr.com, from March 2013: http://museumselfies.tumblr.com/

• About forgetting more easily when you take pictures, original abstract: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/12/04/0956797613504438.abstract
• Participatory Museum, Nina Simon, 2nd March 2010, ISBN : 0615346502: http://www.participatorymuseum.org/
• 8 incredible museums sharing on Pinterest, The Mercury, 29th January 2014, Anna Washenko: http://www.pottsmerc.com/lifestyle/20140129/8-incredible-museums-sharing-on-pinterest
• Photos et écrans dans les musées au détriment ou au service de la visite ?, Mixeum, 8th September 2009, Samuel Bausson: http://www.mixeum.net/post/181109063/photos-et-ecrans-dans-les-musees-au-detriment-ou-au
• La photographie: un accélérateur du visuel, Actualités de la Recherche en histoire visuelle, 27th August 2009, André Gunthert and Michel Poivert
• Wikipedian in Residence, Wikipedia: http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian_in_Residence ; http://blog.wikimedia.fr/tag/museum-de-toulouse
• @ddrmuseum, Instagram campaign: http://ow.ly/i/4s27R
• La photo, ce n’est pas que de l’image (Photo is not picture, in French), Vincent Vandevelde, salon-etourisme.com