• 1 Pierre Bourdieu, Luc Boltanski and Robert Castel, Un art moyen. Essai sur les usages sociaux de la (...)

1Democratizing photographic practices in society is not new, as Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated in his analysis of photography’s role in validating the family, as a unit and identity.1 Nevertheless, the state of photographic equipment and practices has vastly changed with the arrival of digital technology. In recent years, digital cameras and now smartphones have completely transformed our relationship to art exhibitions through photographic practices. The increase in image production among museum and gallery visitors is the starting point of my article.

• 2 André Gunthert, “La photo au musée, ou l’appropriation,” L’Atelier des icônes, 2011. [Online] https (...)
• 3 Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum. History, Theory, Politics, New York, Routledge, 1995.

2Photographic practices among the public seem to fall into two conflicting camps: in the first, photography is seen as a right, a popular activity of appropriating artwork.2 The other, conjuring up the “aesthetic shock” of Malraux’s imaginary, considers photography to be an obstacle which prevents a direct relationship with artwork, and devalues photography as a narcissistic, recreational pastime. Considering this context, cultural institutions appear to be caught in a vice, both acknowledging and even stimulating these practices, while on the other hand reigning in the visitor’s body and behavior3 by imposing limits – even banning picture-taking.

• 4 Sébastien Appiotti, Photographiez, participez ! Cadrage du regard et pratiques photographiques au f (...)
• 5 Museum of Ice Cream. [Online] https://www.museumoficecream.com/ [accessed 15 February 2021].
• 6 Mad Dimension – Manoir de Paris. [Online] https://www.maddimension.fr/ [accessed 15 February 2021].

3In this article, I will examine this first perspective. For indeed, certain cultural institutions have begun to develop strategies that encourage photographic participation among their visitors.4 Some cultural (and entertainment) sites are even, by nature, designed around and for photography, such as the Museum of Ice Cream5 (Los Angeles) or Mad Dimension (Paris), self-described as “the insta-worthy, pop up museum.”6 In public museums and around historical monuments, certain spaces are equally dedicated to photographic practices: they stage the public’s presence through the use of mirrors, (Coliseum, Rome), and often encourage visitors to share their photos on social media platforms (Oceanographic Museum, Monaco; Renwick Gallery, Washington).

• 7 Yves Jeanneret, “La place des transformations médiatiques dans l’évolution des musées. Une probléma (...)
• 8 Joëlle Le Marec, “La participation. Pour un retour au politique en muséologie et dans le domaine ‘s (...)

4At the same time, several researchers in the last few years7 have observed a surge in the development of digital facilitation in cultural institutions. Joëlle Le Marec notes a reconfiguration in museums which has expanded and changed the nature of participation: “The expansion of participation into a museography that involves the visitor but is void of any political dimension is recent: it coincides with the development of digital-based approaches.”8

• 9 Sébastien Appiotti, Photographiez, participez ! Cadrage du regard et pratiques photographiques au f (...)
• 10 Yves Winkin, Anthropologie de la communication. De la théorie au terrain, Paris, Seuil, 2001.

7This article is based on research from my doctoral studies9 covering a group of temporary exhibitions from the Réunion des musées nationaux – Grand Palais (RMN – Grand Palais). Within this group, I have chosen to examine the way in which these so-called “participatory” devices materialize in situ, inviting the public to photograph their surroundings and themselves and possibly share their images on social media platforms. An ethnographic study, based on participant observation and communication anthropology10 was conducted across five exhibitions:

• 11 Jean Davallon, “Le pouvoir sémiotique de l’espace,” Hermès, no. 61.3, 2011, p. 38‑44. [Online] http (...)
• 12 Dynamo (2013), Jean Paul Gaultier (2015), Hergé (2016), Rodin (2017) and Joyaux (2017).
• 13 Emmanuel Souchier, “L’image du texte pour une théorie de l’énonciation éditoriale,” Les Cahiers de (...)
• 14 Alexandra Saemmer, Rhétorique du texte numérique. Figures de la lecture, anticipations de pratiques(...)
• 15 Yves Jeanneret and Emmanuel Souchier, “L’énonciation éditoriale dans les écrits d’écran,” Communica (...)

8I selected these exhibitions for my research group based on specific criteria: location (the RMN – Grand Palais), the presence of at least one “participatory” photographic device (mobile application, photo booth, etc.), and several types of museology.11 The consistency in location and in the use of a participatory device allowed me to analyze in particular the possible influence of museography on the public’s photographic practices. In certain mobile applications12 made for visitors, I also analyzed what specifically counts as editorial enunciation13 namely, the discreet traces often left behind by mobile application developers when conceiving of these devices. My socio-semiotic approaches14, combine Peirce’s pragmatic semiotics with a French semio-pragmatic approach of digital writings.15 This allowed me to understand the constraints and technical bearings of the screen pages studied, and to connect my analysis to the social context of production. By this, I mean understanding design practices and representations of the public and their participation, thanks to semi-structured interviews carried out with professionals from three of the institution’s departments (communication, facilitation, and digital content). Lastly, I should specify that while my doctoral research involved direct observation of the public’s photographic practices, in this article I have focused rather on how the public is socially represented and modelized, within the exhibition as well as in the interviewees’ social discourse.

• 16 Jean Davallon, L’Exposition à l’œuvre. Stratégies de communication et médiation symbolique, Paris, (...)

9First, drawing on a theoretical framework using the exhibition as media,16 I will discuss the double reconfiguration of photographic practices and participation among the contemporary public. Next, based on the aforementioned set of exhibitions, I will analyze the RMN – Grand Palais’s strategies for structuring and stimulating photographic participation.

• 17 Jean Davallon, L’Exposition à l’œuvre. Stratégies de communication et médiation symbolique, Paris, (...)
• 18 Jean Davallon, L’Exposition à l’œuvre. Stratégies de communication et médiation symbolique, Paris, (...)
• 19 Umberto Eco, Lector in fabula ou La coopération interprétative dans les textes narratifs, Paris, Gr (...)

10In the introduction to L’Exposition à l’œuvre (2000), Jean Davallon draws a close parallel between the elements of an exhibition and those of media. In particular, the researcher invites us to understand the exhibition as “a mode of receiving” heritage objects that interact with the public within a space. The exhibition is defined here as a composite that the visitor experiences physically.17 Its social practices are meaningful, whether they are expressed as contemplation, participation, rejection, or adherence to a value system. As a socio-symbolic apparatus,18 the exhibition intentionally arranges objects inside a space, which become key to interpreting a text, subsequently actualized by its recipient.19 This actualization is similar to a creative, dynamic act of interpretation, which effectively creates a new text, involving the public in its production of meaning. In our case, for example, it could cover everything between distant contemplation and the public’s photographic practices.

• 20 Yves Jeanneret, “La place des transformations médiatiques dans l’évolution des musées. Une probléma (...)

11In 2019, researcher Yves Jeanneret expanded on this definition of the exhibition as media, by placing the exhibition, a strategic media, at the heart of other media productions (posters, catalogues, facilitation devices, etc.). He calls these tactical media, with the understanding that they are “less the object of cultural practice than its accessories.”20 Analyzing tactical media within the exhibition is essential to this article, in order to understand how the mechanisms of mediatization are at play, both in the public’s social practices and in the definition of participation.

• 21 Tous Photographes! La charte des bonnes pratiques dans les établissements patrimoniaux, Ministry of (...)

13This regulatory framework was updated in 2014 by the Ministry of Culture, with the establishment of the Tous photographes charter.21 This charter calls for a paradigm shift: faced with conventional arguments (artwork security, visitor comfort, copyright, etc.) which aim to corral the public into a contemplative, distanced visit around the displays, this charter offers an alternative set of values shaping new ways of visiting. Article 3 of the Tous photographes charter is particularly interesting to analyze for this reason. It includes a graphic representation, in the form of a black camera overlayed with a pink @ symbol.

• 22 Alexandre Delarge, “Avant-propos,” Le Musée participatif. L’ambition des écomusées, Paris, La Docum (...)

15The call for public participation within exhibitions is not, however, new. In fact, since the 1960s, French “social museums” and “new museology” have made participation an essential part of their mission,22 specifically providing opportunities to citizens for political involvement in the life of the institution. If the use of museum participation seems to be more frequent than before, it is notably because these participatory initiatives have been designed in direct relation to institutions’ digital communication strategy.

• 23 Sandri, Eva, L’Imaginaire des dispositifs numériques pour la médiation au musée d’ethnographie, doc (...)
• 24 Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide, New York, New York University (...)
• 25 Tim O’Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0. Design patterns and business models for the next generation of soft (...)
• 26 Philippe Bouquillion and Jacob Matthews, Le Web collaboratif. Mutations des industries de la cultur (...)
• 27 Gustavo Gomez-Mejia, “Fragments sur le partage photographique. Choses vues sur Facebook ou Twitter,(...)

16The dissemination of digital facilitation devices within museums also results in the projection of digital imaginaries,23 stemming from participatory fan culture24 and what has been called the “Web 2.0.”25 In both cases, these imaginaries promote user activity, the ability to create content,26 and circulate it online. From this perspective, photographic practices align several outcomes: they offer an activity to the public, and potentially stimulate participation through sharing on social media platforms. Furthermore, it is interesting to note with Gustavo Gomez-Mejia that a contemporary semantic shift has occurred, moving from the taking of photographs to an injunction to share them – a “softly spoken command (every Internet user must know how to ‘share’).”27

• 28 Jean Davallon, “Introduction. Le public au centre de l’évolution du musée,” Culture & Musées, no. 2 (...)
• 29 Bernard Schiele, “L’invention simultanée du visiteur et de l’exposition” [1992], Le Musée des scien (...)
• 30 Sarah Labelle, La Ville inscrite dans “la société de l’information.” Formes d’investissement d’un o (...)
• 31 Joëlle Le Marec (2007) and Yves Jeanneret (2019) have each respectively demonstrated the importance (...)
• 32 Alexis, Lucie, Appiotti, Sébastien and Sandri, Eva, “Présentation du supplément 2019 A: Les injonct (...)
• 33 Joëlle Le Marec, Ce que le “terrain” fait aux concepts. Vers une théorie des composites, research s (...)

17This participatory reconfiguration takes place specifically in the context of a managerial turn28 and communicational turn29 in museums. As a result of this double turn, new injunctions are emerging and spreading,30 contributing to the metamorphosis and modernization31 of cultural institutions. By injunction, I mean “varying degrees of accompaniment—from the smallest suggestion to the most imperative command—and suggestions meant to stimulate and elicit practices,”32 which can be analyzed as a composite33 (Le Marec, 2002) through the tangible (exhibition, devices) and the intangible (discourse, representations, the shaping of practices).

• 34 Jean-Miguel Pire, “Malraux contre l’éducation ou contre l’Éducation nationale? Brève généalogie d’u (...)

19The Réunion des Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais is a public institution created in 2011 through the merger of two state cultural institutes: the RMN (1895) and the Grand Palais (1900). The Grand Palais is located in Paris’s 8^th arrondissement, perpendicular to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, near Les Invalides and the Place de la Concorde. This highly symbolic site was built for the 1900 Paris World Fair, and some of its spaces were reconfigured into the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (GNGP, 1962-1964) on the initiative of André Malraux. Through the GNGP, Malraux’s conception of cultural democratizing policies could be applied. For the Minister of Cultural Affairs, it was indeed important to “foster a direct relationship between the public and the artwork.”34

• 35 Émilie Flon, Gaëlle Lesaffre and Anne Watremez, “Les applications mobiles de musées et de sites pat (...)

22In 2014, based on a study of sixty-seven mobile applications from cultural institutions, Émilie Flon, Gaëlle Lesaffre and Anne Watremez35 identified the major trends and “facilitation forms” that characterize them. These software tools were then grouped into families of functionality: “Display,” “Audioguide,” and “On-site facilitation.” Within this study set, only two mobile applications seemed to draw on “innovative” technologies in an experimental way: BlinksterCP (Musée National d’Art Moderne) and Dynamo.

• 36 “Dynamo, l’application mobile gratuite pour smartphones,” RMN – Grand Palais. [Online] https://pres (...)

23From April to July in 2013, the Dynamo exhibition allowed for experimentation through new digital media devices, provided by the telecom service provider Orange and the RMN – Grand Palais’s digital department. The Dynamo exhibition made it possible to “develop a classic example of a participative application to be used before, during, and after the visit.” (Multimedia Project Manager, RMN – Grand Palais). In the press kit for the mobile application, it is stated that “this application, consistent with the artists’ approach, invites the visitor to get involved with their creations, allowing for an enriched and participatory experience with key works in the exhibition.”36

• 37 Near Field Communication (NFC) is a communication protocol allowing for the exchange of information (...)

24Two technological solutions were tested within Dynamo in relation to this mobile visitor application. One is structured around NFC museum tags37 that allow for the transmission of content (audio, text, images, videos) when a visitor passes his smartphone near the work. The other centers on photographic, written, and auditory participation.

• 38 Allard, Laurence, “Remix Culture: l’âge des cultures expressives et des publics remixeurs?,” in Act (...)

25As illustrated on the screen-page below (fig. 2), the accompanying institutional text – “découvrez postez mémorisez partagez” (discover post memorize share) – is structured around four injunctions to action, two of which involve circulating and sharing the photographs taken. Moreover, the discourse establishes a strong link between sharing and memory. On this same screen-page, an interactive play button is accompanied by the caption: “Votre carnet de visite” (your visitor’s guide). This tool is able to count the number of works recorded in the guide and those that have been shared in photographic form with other exhibition visitors. On a second screen-page (fig. 3), the injunction to share photographs materializes as hyperlinks. Thus, this screen-page’s editorial enunciation activates the semiotic “interpretants” of users familiar with social media platforms and injunctions on expressiveness.38

• 39 Denise Jodelet (ed.), Les Représentations sociales, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1989.

28In light of the analyses and prototype features that emerged through Dynamo, new questions arise: why are designers (both digital project managers from service providers and the RMN – Grand Palais staff) shaping a model participatory public figure? What are the commercial interests, professional pretensions, and social representations driving this modeling? To answer these questions, I analyzed the designers’ social representations of the public,39 in the interviewees’ social discourse, in the analyzed exhibitions, and in material gathered from digital writings.

• 40 Illiès L, “Avec ses expositions d’automne Fantin-Latour, Hergé et le Mexique, la RMN joue la carte (...)

30Concerning photography, through our application the public will be able to insert speech bubbles from famous comic books into their photos and bubble in, or “cartoonize” their photos, before sharing them.40

• 41 Olivier Le Deuff, Folksonomies. Les usagers indexent le Web, Villeurbanne, Presses de l’ENSSIB, 200 (...)

33A hashtag is provided for each exhibition, using the model #ExhibitionName (#ExpoRodin). This hashtag aggregates digital content published by visitors on social media platforms, according to a logic that originally stemmed from folksonomy.41 Then, an injunctive rhetoric is implemented in the exhibition to invite sharing of this same content: “Share #ExpoRodin.” This discourse is accompanied by Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter logos. Lastly, for some exhibitions, these injunctions to share are complemented by permanently installed flat screens, allowing visitors to view Internet user participation in real time.

• 42 Eliseo Verón, La Sémiosis sociale. Fragments d’une théorie de la discursivité, Saint-Denis, Presses (...)

34This device combines a production grammar42 with exemplification through a visual trace. The following photograph of the flat screens from Empires (Monumenta 2016) is one concrete example. It features the following accompanying words: “Suivez et partagez votre expérience de visite #Monumenta2016 #HuangYongPing Share your experience of your visit #Monumenta2016 #HuangYongPing.” The first flat screen allows visitors to view digital media content proposed by the RMN – Grand Palais. The second screen allows visitors to view the exhibition’s themed Twitter livestream, and any potential contribution they may have made using the hashtag.

• 43 Exhibition brochure for Hergé, RMN – Grand Palais, 2016. [Online] https://www.grandpalais.fr/pdf/De (...)

37– In the Hergé exhibition (2016), with a wall of human-sized characters from the Tintin comic book. In the exhibition brochure,43 this apparatus is presented as: “THE WALL OF SELFIES. Photograph yourself in front of a wall of Hergé’s characters and share your images on social networks. #ExpoHergé.”

• 44 Appiotti, Sébastien and Sandri, Eva, 2020. “‘Innovez!’ ‘Participez!’ Interroger la relation entre m (...)

41In a previous article, I demonstrated how the RMN – Grand Palais wished to be identified as a specialist in cultural engineering, technological innovation, and cultural participation.44 To do this, the RMN – Grand Palais notably makes its exhibitions available as incubation grounds for so-called “innovative” digital devices, and organizes fairs around the convergence of art, culture, and new technologies (Salon Art#Connexion in 2018). In doing so, the RMN – Grand Palais is seeking to reposition its institutional image around movement, modernity, and the intersection of arts and industry. In this context, public photographic participation takes on an importance greater than the attempt to engage visitors through activity.

• 45 Yves Jeanneret, “La place des transformations médiatiques dans l’évolution des musées. Une probléma (...)
• 46 Yves Jeanneret, “La place des transformations médiatiques dans l’évolution des musées. Une probléma (...)

42For Yves Jeanneret, this institutional repositioning is part of an “inversion in the relationship between media and museums [...] [aimed at] shifting mass-market facilitation tools first sought out by the museum as tactical media into the position of strategic devices.”45 Similarly, the devices framing public participation are part of this inversion, not only reinforcing the exhibition’s mediatization, but also changing the cultural institution’s social role. This latter effect turns the institution into a playground of experimentation around content “likely to intensify uses, flow, and traces.”46

• 47 Noémie Couillard, Les Community managers des musées français. Identité professionnelle, stratégies (...)
• 48 Yves Citton, “Rebonds sur les thèmes de la journée,” in Conference “La fabrique de la participation (...)

43In her dissertation devoted to the professionalization of cultural institution community managers, (2017), Noémie Couillard shows how, within the same period, both in France and internationally, museums have developed photographic contests to accompany and stimulate public participation, by investing in different digital platforms, such as Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. This evolution goes hand in hand with a greater interest in the metrics and traces of participation than in the participation itself, concerning the same institutions.47 According to Yves Citton, if the photographic policy within institutions has shifted from prohibition to active encouragement, it is also because institutions need these photographs to be taken, shared, and circulated. I argue that this need for “attentional traces”48 contributes to designers’ socio-technical representations of the visitors, whose reconfigured cultural practices push the institution to offer picture-sharing tools on social media platforms. These representations seem particularly applicable at the RMN – Grand Palais, even though the data collected on this subject by its Research and Marketing Team suggest the opposite. Between 2013 and 2016, only 3% of GNGP visitors declared having used their cell phones to share content (textual or visual) on social media platforms related to the exhibitions they visited. Ideas that connect the museum visit to software-tools usage and platform content-sharing thus remain rather rhetorical, aimed at convincing an audience (the board of trustees, the media, etc.) of the institution’s repositioning related to activity, modernity, and photographic sharing.

• 49 Marie Cambone, “L’expérimentation SmartCity à la Cité internationale: une réactualisation du paradi (...)
• 50 André Gunthert, L’Image partagée. La photographie numérique, Paris, Textuel, 2015

45At the heart of this investigation, I identified a major concern in the institutional repositioning of the RMN – Grand Palais: the “re-actualization”49 of participation is here based on a “photographic shift”50 associating online circulation and sharing across social media platforms. This repositioning accompanies a proposed alternative aesthetic experience around cultural objects. But above all, it transforms the concern to stimulate public activity into a global injunction to participation. This injunction benefits the institution while directly supporting its digital communication strategy.

• 51 Serge Proulx, “L’injonction à participer au monde numérique,” Communiquer, no. 20, 2017. [Online] h (...)
• 52 Gustavo Gomez-Mejia, “Fragments sur le partage photographique. Choses vues sur Facebook ou Twitter, (...)
• 53 Dominique Cardon and Antonio Casilli, Qu’est-ce que le digital labor ?, Bry-sur-Marne, INA Éditions (...)

46Furthermore, Serge Proulx describes the current expansion of participation as an illusion and a “semantic ruse,”51 to the extent that its rhetoric is currently exploited to benefit commercial interests. Indeed, the various analyzed exhibitions and devices, when put in relation with the interviewees’ social discourse, indicate the RMN’s high level of interest in photographic sharing. For Gustavo Gomez-Mejia, the repeated use of “sharing” as a value on the Web and social media platforms “euphemizes and adds hype to the production and distribution of content across networks.”52 Indeed, under the guise of celebrating the audience’s viewpoints and subjectivity, we should also ask if this injunction to share might encourage a particular form of digital labor53 within the exhibition. The role of exhibition audiences’ photographic sharing is an unexamined issue which begs the question: does the public participate in the exhibition’s outreach, communication, and even sponsorship, in the form of visual prescriptive micro-labor?