Memories of Childhood / Tableaux Shoot

Childhood Nostalgia

After researching the work of a couple of tableaux photographers, being Alfonso Almendros and Maria Kapajeva, I really wanted to get underway with my own tableaux photoshoot, however, I did not feel like I wanted to produce a series of images in the style of either Kapajeva or Almendros because I wasn’t completely attracted to their work in order to implement their style into my own example.

However, I had a look through a photo book which present in the classroom at school. It was a book entitled ‘Where Mimosa Bloom’ by an artist named Rita Puig-Serra Costa. In her book, she also specialised in aspects of tableaux photography in the form of photographing objects – still life as such and portraits of the family members and then pairing the images together. However, the meaning and concept goes beyond what the simplicity it sounds like. The objects photographed in a studio style as opposed to photographing them in their natural environment or where she found them are then digitally directly placed in this photo book on the opposite page of a portrait also taken by Serra-Costa. It seems as thought the portraits are of family members and the objects paired with each portrait is relevant in some way to the subject of the portrait. Although there is no direct explanation or link between the two, a narrative is drawn by the audience where we provide out own explanation of what could be the intention of this – there is obviously a meaning of the object in relation tot he subject but this is not actually explained. I found this very intriguing and eye-catching in its minimalism and wished to attempt a series of my own in the style I witnessed by Serra-Costa in her book ‘Where Mimosa Bloom’ which is about her family and place they live.

The primary results are below. I first attempted by completing my own memory and I will then go onto do the same process with my other close family members, including my mum, my step-dad, my nan and my girlfriend. This will provide a very compete and cohesive set of image which tell a visual story of not only my childhood memories about the loved ones around me.

Explaining the Series' Process

Here are the images I created in response to Rita Puig-Serra Costa’s images from her series ‘Where Mimosa Bloom’. My aim from this series I have created was to show my own family through a composition and the juxtaposition of old archives in comparison to contemporary, staged portraits of their life now and how they look back on to the memory they have shown. I have presented nt only my own childhood nostalgia but the others around me to create a cohesive narrative accompanied by very thoughtful inserts of written notes by each individual to he;p the audience understand what is going on in the photo. Each individual has explained why they have chosen the object they have and what it means to them as well as the memory it brings back. I attempted to show this connection to a particular object even further in the portraits where I asked my subjects to create a facial expression/show through their presented emotion the feeling the object gives them when looking back on its worth of their childhood.

To create the studio-like images of the objects each subject handed me to accompany their portrait, I set-up a mini studio in my room suing black card. I collected a couple sheets of black card from my school to take home t allow me to produce to the still-life images. In my room I have two very large windows both with very large window sills as the windows are almost like alcoves in that they are very far into the wall. This allowed me to set up the black card on the window sill and this was perfect as I allowed for lots of natural light which resulted in my objects being perfectly lit and the conditions for this were great when I would come back for school each day. I created an infinity curve using one sheet stuck to the wall and then competed the set-up with another sheet on the flat surface and I would place each object on the curve and then adjust my camera settings accordingly to account for the lighting already provided which obviously illuminated the right side of each object and this allowed for an interesting look to each image where the left ide would be in the dark and I would aim to under-expose each very slightly to get the best effect of the black background. For the notes written by each subject, I got each of them to hold their own note with their hand so it adds a personal touch and I would photograph this against the black background also.

I don’t really feel a need to explain the actual chosen object of each person because the explanation in the words of the subject themselves is provided in written form and I feel like my words won’t do the memory justice because a memory is a very personal and it is best told fro the perspective of the person with that memory. I have attempted to get as close in to the note as possible to it is legible at the same time as keeping the hand in frame and I hope that the handwriting is not too difficult to read.