I decided to look back on tableaux photography because I believe that the final images from my project use some of the ideas used in tableaux photography, it is also one of my personal inspirations towards photography and why I created the project in the first place.

Tableaux photography is a style of photography where people are staged in a constructed environment and a pictorial narrative is conveyed often through a single image.

Tableaux comes from the french word ‘tableaux vivant’ which directly translated in English means ‘living picture’. Tableaux Vivant was very popular within the Victorian era, the term describes staged groups of artists models often using dramatic costumes, carefully posed, motionless without speaking and theatrically lit, recreating paintings ‘on stage’. In modern day photography we have interpreted tableaux photography as a style of photography where people are staged in a constructed environment, it is when you respond to a painting in the past and turn it into a photograph of your own. Therefore, as  this is how it is interpreted I will be making my own set up images based on a famous painting. Below is an example of Tableaux photography, as you can see, the top image is the image of The raft of Medusa, a very famous image. Tableaux photography has commonly been seen based around this image, also seen in the modern interpretation of the image. The modern image could also be allegorical since it does not convey the same literal meaning, however it has no meaning apart from being a funny but well crafted image.

Allegorical:

Allegorical is when an image has a less literal meaning than what is conveyed as it is only a fantasy of what real life is actually like. The word Allegory has the definition of  ‘a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, typically a moral or political one.’ An example would be Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi (between 1475 and 1500). As seen below.