The Other Side of Parc Güell
No it's not.
It's a mob of milling herds of tourists.
At the bottom of the photo is Gaudí's gorgeous mosaic lizard. No fewer than five people are sitting on it. Why?
They are posing for photographs.
There are 12 heads in this photo. At least ten are holding cameras. Six are in the act, at this moment, of taking a photograph.
I swear, if a few more cameras were sucking photons out of the lumeniferous ether, it would become prematurely dark in this locale.
It wasn't helping that I too was there, taking pictures. I was being jostled by other photographers, and jostling others in turn. Objects I wanted to photograph were obscured by bodies, either posing or shooting.
I shot the following images in less than five minutes:
Good grief!
The digital revolution has empowered legions of new photographers, who can click away for hundreds of shots in a single day at little cost. So they flood into scenic places, which become scenic no more, because the scenes are full of camera-wielding tourists.
This year's tourist guides tell you it's OK to take photographs in places like the Prado or the Thyssen as long as you don't use flash or a tripod. Not so. The guides are out of date. I haven't found a single museum that permits cameras anymore. It's becoming obvious why the new rules are needed.
After an hour of repeatedly checking back, I finally caught a moment when the wonderful lizard was devoid of posers. I was setting up when suddenly, another brassy model came along and spoiled the shot.
Oh, wait. That's Jean!
So many people were sitting on the iconic Serpentine Bench that not enough of it showed for a picture. I had to be satisfied with a rear view. Every Gaudí structure became a strange attractor, a nucleus for swirling clouds of tourists.
My expectation of a peaceful, relaxing afternoon strolling through Parc Güell, snapping pictures of stunning architecture was shattered. The only way to get a sense of being in an actual park was to get away from the structures, themselves; off into the plantings.
That's what this photographer did.