Tableaux Photography:

what is it?

A tableau vivant, French for ‘living picture’, is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically lit. It thus combines aspects of theatre and the visual arts.

The idea of tableaux photography is so that we can re create famous images by finding similar props and outfits. The setting and lighting also have an imapct on the outcomes for tableaux. The whole point is to make the image as close to the original as possible. Therefore the setting and all the models expressions have to be near enough the same.

Above this post are all of our class attempts for tableaux photography. We found it quite challenging to keep the same facial expressions because we were stationed in all sorts of positions so at the end of the day most of the outcomes are either fairly blured or fairly dark, however re- creating the images from Caravaggio was quite fun.

Mood Board:

These are just examples taken off google images when searching in ‘ Tableaux Vivant’ some examples in the mood board above are actually examples from Tom Hunter, who’s worked is based on tableaux photography.