Tableaux Vivant and staged reality is photography that the photographer stages in such a way that it is almost like theater that emphasizes what the photographer wants the story to tell.

Tom hunter is an English photographer born in Bournemouth in 1965. His work was specialized in documenting life in Hackney. A lot of his images showed the local issues in the area at the time. His images also often referenced other artists work. Quite often he tried to recreate Johannes Vermeer’s work. An example of him doing this would be in his image “Woman Reading a Possession Order” which is shown below:

This image is a recreation of a Johannes Vermeer image as shown below:

Contextual/Conceptual: Though, Tom Hunter took inspiration from Johannes Vermeer, he has added his own twist on it by showing a mother with her child reading a letter that says they are going to be evicted from their home. Rather than just a woman reading a letter with little meaning. The use of the child rather than just having a bowl of fruit makes the image look a lot sadder. The baby’s body is contorted in such a way that makes it seem like it knows what is going to happen to its home.

Visual: In the image, Tom Hunter has edited the tone in the image so that the image appears very dark throughout the image with the face appearing very brightly from the light of the window. He may have decided to edit the tone to be dark throughout to display the emotion that the woman would be feeling when reading the letter.

Technical: Tom Hunter seems to have only used natural lighting to create this image. This lighting is coming from the window and illuminates the woman’s face for the most part. Secondly, the image is quite over-exposed. This could have been created by having a long shutter speed. This makes the image seem a lot brighter in the light areas than the dark areas.

“Filipa had just had her first baby. We spent the whole day trying things out: we had a bowl of fruit, then we tried some curtains, then incorporated the baby. The light was perfect, a late winter sun coming through the window, really low, like the northern European light.” – A quote from Tom Hunter about how he came up with the image. From a guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/04/photography-tom-hunter-best-shot

Here is a selection of other Tom Hunter images that I really like and may try to recreate:

I have picked a lot of these as my favorites due to the way Tom Hunter uses lighting and because some of them simply display parts of peoples lives, such as grieving for others.

They are inspired by Vermeer and his use of light. The light can signify various things…such as hope.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a french, human photographer, who was born on the 22nd of August 1908. He died on the 3rd of August 2004. He started working on photography in 1930. He was credited with pioneering the genre of street photography. He viewed street photography as capturing a decisive moment. The phrase “decisive moment” is now used often in street photography and refers to when the image represents the essence of the event happening within the image. During Henri-Cartier Bresson’s life he created a few different books, mostly full of images he had taken from different areas in photography, one of these was called “The Decisive Moment”.

This is a moodboard of some of my favourite images that Bressen took to do with street photography.

Technical: This image uses light very consistently throughout. This can be seen due to the background sky and wall being almost the same colour with the foreground also being a very similar shade of white. This could have been created using natural lighting and a high ISO.

Visual: This image varies the tone throughout, with the majority being very brightly coloured and some coloured areas being grey or black. This image displays form and depth really well. This could be due to the darker colours creating a path of rubble down between the buildings.

Contextual: This image seems to have been taken after some kind of bombing or war. We know this due to the rubble covering the street between the buildings and the big hole that the image is being taken through that is in a weird shape. This image also gives a war-torn impression due to the children all having confused and sad faces throughout the image.

Conceptual: The image clearly displays a place that was destroyed during some kind of war. The photographer may have decided to take this image due to show some of the impacts that war can have on towns. The use of children looking sad makes it seem like these were places they lived, along with the rubble along the ground.

Arnold Newman was an american photographer that was born in 1918 and that died in 2006. Newman is often credited with being one of the first to experiment with environmental portraiture, in which the subject is put into a controlled setting to carefully show their life and their work. Newman was also a photography teacher.

Newman took this image in 1963. It is an image of Alfred Krupp. The image makes Alfred look menacing and intimidating. This is done due a few different things. Firstly, it is done through the pose and how Alfred is sitting. By having Alfred leaning forward slightly with his fingers interlocked and below his chin makes him seem very evil and as though he has power over you. Furthermore, contrast is used between the background and the foreground with a lot brighter colours in the background than the foreground. The fact that the darker part is in the foreground with Alfred makes the person viewing the image notice that he isn’t a very normal person, along with being quite ominous.

This portrait seems to have heavily used natural lighting. It seems to have used this kind of lighting to light up the background of the image. This is used to help create the contrast between the foreground and the background. From the light in the background you can tell that Newman wouldn’t have really been able to use a very low shutter speed as the background, especially at the top of the image would appear a lot brighter than it does. Other than using natural light, Newman likely would have used some sort of lamps to shine onto the sides of Alfred’s body. The use of these lamp would distinguish the outline of his suit instead of his body appearing a lot darker in colour. In this image, the colours in the foreground appear as though they have been altered to add even more contrast between the foreground and background, while the colours behind Alfred, in the background seem to be a lot less vibrant and instead are more bland and lighter. This may have been done to highlight the evil personality that Newman sees in Alfred.

This image shows a few different visual techniques. Firstly, Newman shows use of different tones throughout the image. This can be seen especially well in the foreground as the tone of the colours are a lot darker at the bottom rather than at the top. By using tone Newman has been able to show highlight a lot of detail in the texture of the metals in the foreground. Secondly, Newman has placed Alfred in an angle where repeating patterns are shown behind him, this can be seen with the natural light coming from the windows in the roof in the background and the natural light coming from the windows in the back wall. Thirdly, Newman has placed Alfred in front of a window. This window turns what could just be a flat surface, creates form in the image with a large 3D open space in the background.

Contextually, this image taken in 1963, created by Arnold Newman shows Alfred Krupp in front of a factory that he owned. When Alfred found out that Newman was Jewish he did not want him to take his portrait as he was a Nazi during the war. Though he did no longer want Arnold to take his picture, he eventually changed his mind and let him do it. The factory Alfred owned shown in the image behind him used slave labour from concentration camps to manufacture… . Due to these things that Newman found out about Alfred, he decided to try and take a portrait image of him acting evil, which is why he had him leaning forward with is fingers interlocked below his chin with a dark area around him in the foreground. Alfred was not happy with how Newman displayed him, though Newman was very happy and thought of it as him getting a small amount of revenge for the Jews.