Charlotte Cotton on Tableaux Photography

Through studying a chapter of Photography critic Charlotte Cotton’s book “The Photograph As Contemporary Art”, I developed a greater understanding of the concept of Tableaux Photography. This, I discovered, is the practice of constructing every aspect of an image before it is captured, in order to make the staged appear real. For example, Cotton refers to the work of James Casebere who produced the below photo, "Pink Hallway #3" (2000), through building and photographing a miniature version of a hallway from Massachusetts boarding school The Phillips Andover Academy, and flooding it with water. The desired affect of this image, which I believe is achieved, was to spark an unease in the viewer and force them to question the supposed strength of man-made structures.

Through discussion of this work, we came to the conclusion that people often trust and expect to see the truth in photographs, more than they do paintings, and so are often fooled by the technique of tableaux. This quote from Liz Wells’ “Photography: A Critical Introduction” (1996) I feel sums up the key ideas thought about during this seminar -

“We speak of taking photographs rather than making them, because the marks of their construction are not immediately visible; they have the appearance of having come about as traces from the scene itself, rather than as carefully fabricated cultural objects.”

Another artist that operates under this method of working is Jeff Wall. In this photo of his, entitled “Mimic” (1982), Wall has recreated a scene he himself witnessed in everyday life; a white couple making a racist gesture towards a Chinese man as they pass him on the street. The artist, inspired by his memory of this sight, then reconstructed it by employing actors upon a chosen setting but, at first glance, this scene appears genuine and spontaneous. 

Similarly, in his painstakingly-built images, Gregory Crewdson, along with a large lighting crew, fabricate elaborate scenes complete with actors, sets, etc; all the production values of a Hollywood film - just to achieve a single shot. His surreal images, such as the one shown below (from his series "Twilight") which took 11 days to capture, often involve extensive post-production, thus further distorting reality.