Tableau vivant , French for 'living picture', is a style of artistic presentation, often shortened to simply tableau. It most often describes a group of suitably costumed actors, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. By extension, it also applied to works of visual art including painting, photography and sculpture, featuring artists' models in similar arrangements, a style used frequently in the works of the Romantic, Aesthetic, Symbolist, Pre-Raphaelite, and Art Nouveau movements. Jean-François Chevrier was the first to use the term tableau in relation to a form of art photography, which began in the 1970s and 1980s in an essay titled "The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography" in 1989. The key characteristics of the contemporary photographic tableau according to Chevrier are, firstly: "They are designed and produced for the wall. summoning a confrontational experience on the part of the spectator that sharply contrasts with the habitual processes of appropriation and projection whereby photographic images are normally received and "consumed".

The Dead Photos

http://thedeadphotos.com/index/

“The Dead Photos”, an on-going series by Tom Phillips. Featuring a set up scene of a dead man in multiple locations all over the world, since 2007 over 50 images have been uploaded to the series website, which is linked above.