Tableaux Photography

Tableau is a term used to describe an image of a staged scene featuring one or more actors. Initially, the tableau vivant aesthetic was a French term that translates to “living picture,” applicable to both painting and photography. This style presents a key moment or the ‘peripeteia’ in which the photographer carefully orchestrates an image of dramatic climax, referential of paintings, literature, myth, or plays that are a part of our collective consciousness [1]. The viewer is meant to notice the intentional symbols and motifs at either a conscious or subconscious level. The photographic tableau is a method of storytelling in which the viewer is confronted with several temporalities by the decided styles and or use of combination prints [2]. 

The tableau vivant gained popularity in the 1830s and died down around 1920. Originally, actors would pose completely still and silent on a stage, reenacting mostly art and literature scenes. A large wooden frame outlined the stage, imitating a framed painting [3]. It was a method of playful entertainment, first within private aristocratic circles, and later, it circulated into middle and lower-class public spheres. The medium acted as a midpoint between theater and painting, carefully focusing on design, costume, lighting, props, and color. Early tableau photographers such as Oscar Gustave Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson produced these theatrical images by splicing together multiple photographs, creating the desired narrative or pictorial scene. The Victorian tableau’s post-production editing attempted to artificially construct a temporal narrative of an “ideal moment,” one of allegorical or moral evocation [4]. Rejlander’s “The Two Ways of Life” (1857), for example, includes over 30 negatives (each model was photographed individually) that were combined into a singular print [5]. Consequently, the photographic tableau went out of style for nearly a century due to its illusionary and uncanny style. The photographic style, however, made a comeback in the mid-20th century when photographers like Cindy Sherman and, later on, Jeff Wall, introduced a post-modern aesthetic to the medium. 

Tableau photography often reworks quintessential or classic paintings by reinventing various themes, symbols, or aesthetics in an often contemporary framework. More specifically, parody of traditional portraiture will reimagine history from a critical or humorous lens. One example is Gregory Crewdon’s ‘Untitled’ (Ophelia) photograph, 2001. The photographer interprets John Everett Millais ‘Ophelia’ of 1851-52, a Victorian painting depicting the character’s tragic death in Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.6 Millais’s painting imagines Ophelia drowning gracefully and unbothered; meanwhile, Crewdson transforms the image by adopting a subversive suburban backdrop [7]. The scene is meant to merge and expand the original themes of the artwork, in this case, exploring the eerie symbolism of the isolated woman within an entirely opposing context. Again, the photographic tableau is a method of storytelling that invites the viewer to reconsider the context and representation of an art piece through a constructed set, costume, and presence of actors. 

The tableau image is an “instantaneous snapshot” into an event: the event is defined as “an accident, a disordering of the formerly ordered space of the picture" [8]. Most important to the photographic process is the individual carefully and intentionally designing the image in its explicit aesthetics and implicit notions. In turn, a “visual compression of both temporal and the spatial…can be grasped in a moment”–the spectator, in other words, is outside of the represented disorder, however, is momentarily fixed within the captured moment that would otherwise not be seen [9]. The photograph explores a moment of stillness framed within implied mobility [10]. There are multiple temporalities (converging timelines) to consider, including the historical context from which the image draws (in form or thematically) and its constructed duration. Also, the time the spectator explores the image in front of them. Finally, the fabricated tableau transcends traditional timelines and reimagines the concept of time in photography. 

Despite Tableau’s theatrical allure and grandiose vision, many current-day art critics are weary of its relevance as a photographic medium. As Hilde Van Gelder says, the style attempts to “understand the social reality” with subtle activism curated by an artificial ‘decisive moment' [10]. Moreover, some also find it inauthentic and a convenient product of expensive production: complicated set designs, actors, and post-production or collage-style editing. Arguably, the result is an image produced merely for entertainment and market value (produced to sit in a lightbox on a gallery wall): printed and sold for excessive revenue. Tableau enthusiasts don’t fuss over the technicalities; rather, they emphasize the aesthetics and great care in developing alternative narratives. Finally, it’s also productive for tableau photographers to explore the confines of complex socio-political dimensions, such as race and gender, when navigating a fictional photo, utilizing the ability to make a statement, invoke change or thought, and challenge the objective reality.

Endnotes

[1] Joanna Lowry, “Modern Time: Revisiting the Tableau” in Time and Photography (Leuven University Press, 2010), 58.

[2] Lowry, “Modern Time: Revisiting the Tableau,” 57.

[3] Rachel Rossner, “Tableaux viv

ants” (The University of Chicago, Theories of Media).

[4] Lowry, “Modern Time: Revisiting the Tableau”, 52.

[5] Oscar Gustave Rejlander, “The Two Ways of Life,” Carbon Print, 1857, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

[6] Everett Millais, “Ophelia,” Oil Paint on Canvas, 1851-1852, The Tate Britain, London, UK.

[7] Gregory Crewdon, “Untitled (Ophelia),” Digital chromogenic print, 2000-2001, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

[8] Lowry, “Modern Time: Revisiting the Tableau”, 57.

[9] Alexandru Șerbănescu, “Theater and Photography” (Ovidius University of Constanta), 2017, Romania.

[1] Ágnes Pethő, “The Image, Alone: Photography, Painting and the Tableau Aesthetic in Post-Cinema,” Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, 2017, 155.

[11] Hilde Van Gelder, “Photography Today: Between Tableau and Document,” 2010.