The newly restorated Rijksmuseum

[Cem_Usakligil]

The famous Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has been undergoing an extensive renovation which took more than 10 years to complete and it has just been reopened on the 14 of April. For those not in the know, this museum harbors masterpieces by great Dutch artists such as Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, van Dijck and many more.

So I have visited the museum the other day and I was very impressed by the renovation as well as the artworks. Of course I took some pictures too. Here are just a couple to begin with, I haven't had the chance to process the bulk yet. So I will add more along the way. Please feel free to C&C, as usual.

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[Cem_Usakligil]

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[Cem_Usakligil]

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[Cem_Usakligil]

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[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi Cem,

Great images, as usual. Thanks for letting us share some of the experience.

Post #1: Contemplative from front to back, and Mondriaan reflections.
Post #2: The watchers being watched ...
Post #3: Nice overview, handheld no less. Good idea to include the railing, I would have probably attempted a vertigo shot without it. The D800 earned it's keep, lots of DR.
Post #4: If he'd had a bench, it could have been an exact replica of the pose.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

Cem,

This has a pleasing familiarity to your previous museum images. I like the symmetry and the importance of yellow, a much underused important color! The yellow of the figure is repeated on the wall and the lady in the black dress and white pants, is also reflected on the opposite side of the room! Well imagined and executed!

Asher

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Thanks Asher and Bart, appreciated. As usual, it is a pity that many people look but don't react to treads like this.

 

[Asher Kelman]

What's the link to the picture with a wall separating two sides of a museum gallery?

Asher

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

What's the link to the picture with a wall separating two sides of a museum gallery?

Asher

Is this the one you were looking for Asher?
http://openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9402

 

[Antonio Correia]

Excellent images Cem.
Very well done, all of them.

 

[Asher Kelman]

My search for siblings!

Thanks for the link. It's exactly what I was searching for! Ever since I first saw this museum picture of yours, my dear Cem, I've been on the lookout for a related sibling.

Cem,

My comments are my immediate reactions but influenced by previous photographs I've seen where you have looked at windows, passageways and doors. Without any previous knowledge of your seeming fixation on Portals by which we pass from one place, status or time to another, I'd have already been thinking of, at least, the opposite side of a mirror, mimicking two spaces, a real and a virtual one.

Here, we're faced with a seemingly central pillar dividing two exhibition spaces and holding up an impressive ceiling over a wood plank and stone geometrically inlaid floor. On one side is a man with a camera, (perhaps that iconic, caricatured Japanese tourist) facing on the other side a bronze sculpture of a wolf perhaps, representing maybe Rome, it doesn't matter, but it's mythological.

Both sides of the gallery are perhaps separated by a wall. Still, it seems that one space on the left is real and the one on the right is imagined. In fact they are both places for the exhibition of the materialization of the imagined.

A clean and thought provoking shot that makes more sense if you will eventually assemble all such related pictures in a series and then whittle them down to the best. This one will remain.

The essence can now be extracted thus:

Both sides are separated, one real and one imagined. In fact they are both places for the exhibition and materialization of the imagined!