PROCESSING… is about how the relation between the viewer and the work of art has shifted: here the viewer becomes the subject and the work is reduced to a prop. The selfie makes clear that photography is no longer about “I was there” but about “this exists, and here is the proof that I was there”. Nikola Mihov, on the series: “For several years I went regularly to the Louvre and spent long hours in the colourful crowd of tourists who come from all over the world to see the Mona Lisa. That room has the atmosphere of a rock concert: the Gioconda is the star and the tourists are the groupies. To see her close up you have to dive into the crowd and hope the wave of bodies carries you to the front of the stage. The crowd is so dense that it becomes uncomfortable: you can hardly breathe, the pickpockets have a field day, selfie sticks duel with each other, elbows are used and the guards play bouncers… And in the end it is all justified: the Mona Lisa has become a consumer product, a place of pilgrimage.”