Tableau photography: What is it?

Tableau simply means staged. This is a type of documentary photography as the photographer may find the subjects in their natural environment but may ask them to pose in a certain way to make for a good photograph. It is the form of a ‘living picture’. Most photographers will use their own models who are carefully positioned and posed and can often be quite theatrical and staged in an attempt to create a meaning and bring across a message to the spectator looking at the images. Often props will be used as well as facial expressions. I like the idea of tableau photography as I am able to develop a story and bring in different characters for the spectator to interpret and view. I also like the idea that it is documenting the way people think. This can be more of a broad way of doing documentary photography but it does fit. Photographers are able to explore new things as well as make a visual documentation of the way our modern society thinks and the way some people feel within it. We are able to document the environment that we live in, in a more interesting way. Something that I have noticed in modern tableau photography is that everyone appears to be naked. Somehow I don’t think that I will be using this in my response to tableau photography just because I feel that there is no real need to be naked in images, I think that images are more effect in the art of telling a story through the emotion of the subject/character rather than the physical appearance of them.

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