Austrian Photographer Spends Hours Waiting for Museum Goers to Match Artwork and the Results Are Priceless
Austrian photographer Stefan Draschan spends hours upon hours hanging around museums, but it’s not because he loves the art. It’s because he’s waiting for his own art to appear in his camera frame, waiting for museum goers to come along who perfectly match the artwork they are looking at.
The project takes a lot of patience because incredibly, Draschan’s photos are not staged. He will literally wait all day for someone to come along who happens, by chance, to be twinning with the exhibition he’s attending. And Draschan has to be sly too, as he snaps the photos in secret without his subjects being aware that their artsy coincidence is being captured on camera.
In this way, the series resembles an undercover version of the VanGoYourself challenge, an art platform that encourages people to pose as their favourite famous artworks, or the museum-doppelgänger trend, where people snap pics in front of paintings that resemble them.
The unique beauty of People Matching Artworks, however, is that the entire experiment in a way relies on divine timing. The right person has to approach the right piece of art at the right time and Draschan needs to be there to capture it.
Magically, the stars seem to align for the photographer quite a lot and the photographs are living proof of this.
The project definitely takes an intense amount of patience – how long would one have to wait for someone who perfectly matches Monet’s Water Lilies to pop into the room – but judging by people’s reaction to the images online, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze.
In a perfect marriage of fashion, fine art and photography, Draschan’s ultra meta images entertain, impress and generally make people happy.
The photographer doesn’t intend to stop anytime soon so word to the wise, if you’re around Paris, Vienna or Berlin and visiting a museum, you may end up on candid camera, so definitely dress to impress!
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