Tableaux- Mood board

Mind map:

What is Tableaux Vivants?

Tableaux is a french word for ‘living image’ and is a representation of scene, painting, sculpture, etc, by a person posed or grouped together in silence and motionless. When creating he Tableaux vivant it is key that the subject carefully positioned in place usually in costume with props to really help to set the scene. A tableaux vivant can be presented in a multiple of way including a ‘live performance’, sculpture, painting and photography. The most common movement of tableaux vivant is in the words of the Romantic, Aesthetic, Symbolic and Art-nouveau. In the 1970s and 1980s a man named Jean-Francois Chevrier was one of the first to introduce tableaux vivant into art photography when he wrote an essay entitled “The Adventures of the Picture Form in the History of Photography” in 1989.

The below image is a prime example of a photographer using a famous painting and recreating though people in poses, using costume and props.

Below shows a different tableaux photography by  Ryan Shude, his work is not so much recreated from paintings but is still set up and staged.

Action plan: 

For tableaux Vivant after looking at such different types of photographers it inspired me myself to be a bit more adventurous and really find a deeper image that i can portray in different lights. That when I started looking at fairy tales. my initial idea was Alice in Wonderland but after looking deeper its was clear to me that ”Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” provided more doors for me to go through. After finally deciding on what I wanted to base my Tableaux Vivant I needed to select a final scene. I did a brain storms of the key moments in the story and came to the conclusion that the scene where the wicked queen is disguised and giving snow white the apple would be the most effective in this case. i then found my models, simple costumes and props and went down to the studio. This was then followed by the hard decision of what lighting and background I needed to portray this vital scene.

 

My Response:

Visual:

For both images they have a set plain black background, which helps the characters stand out more. By using the black background I believe it help emphasizes the different personalities of snow-white whom is illuminating of the black background compared to the Witch who is somewhat merging into the darkness of the background. I believe this to help set the atmosphere, and how to feel about the characters. The image overall has a very dark feeling towards it with a white light mainly being focused on the representation of snow-white. To create this white image I used a ring light to help portray the correct textures as well as helping to set the mood. The view point is fairly straight on so the viewer is presented with almost a perfect side view of both characters, linking to the symmetry of the image. Although different heights the idea of symmetry is still presented in the scene of a side image of both model and both essentially reaching out the object. I think this helps divide the emotions towards the different characters with the witch model have a more mysterious, covert and dark feeling strongly contracting with the bight eyed character of snow-white who gives off a more bright and blissful feeling. overall providing us with a very balanced image due to the contrasts of the well know characters and their stereotypes.

Technical:

For this image I chose to use a white ring light that firstly gave off a whitey and blue light which I thought to deem appropriate to the scene. I placed the light at a slight light as I thought this would be important to help portray characters and help improve the over all understanding of the image. the ring light was positioned to the left of the image- closer to ”snow-white”. I did this because snow-white is the much brighter character and ore oblivious of the darkness. I think by positioning the light in the place it help illuminate snow-white character improving the overall representation of the image.  Due to the type of lighting the image has a much more colder representation to it rather than a warmer color and feel.

Conceptual:

Originally this image was from the cartoon film ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ produced in 1937 by Walt Disney. The story is about White’s beauty, the wicked queen orders the murder of her innocent stepdaughter, but later discovers that Snow White is still alive and hiding in a cottage with seven friendly little miners. Disguising herself as a hag, the queen brings a poisoned apple to Snow White, who falls into a death-like sleep that can be broken only by a kiss from the prince. This particular image was taken from the film when the wicked queen was giving Snow White the apple. presenting the innocence from snow white and the darkness and evilness presented from the wicked queen.

Contextual:

Although originally I took these image using the set prop of an apple, I also wanted to look at something different and add my own interpretation to provide a deeper meaning to viewers. After my using the prop of an image i turned to the idea of the wicked queen handing over a phone, conveniently an Apple iPhone. Once this idea came to place, the deeper became evident. With the original concept being handing over an apple that kills Snow White linking to the idea that technology is now starting to kill us off, so therefore by giving a phone to Snow White is give the idea that with social media taking over our lives and the new addiction to looking down at our phone, we are slowly wasting away and dying on the inside. The representation that technology is melting our brain has been a worry of people all over the world with now media starts taking over completely. The poison is now our technology.