Tableau photography – starting with Jeff Wall

Continuing our look into ‘setting the scene’ we are introduced to tableau photography.

The tableau photograph is a staged image, being much closer to painting, film or theatre than other forms of photography.  The photographer, who may well work with assistants, technicians and actors, meticulously constructs a scene in order to tell a story to the audience, often producing only one image.  Staging scenes in this way gives the photographer full control over the image; similar to a film or theatre set, everything that the viewer sees has been deliberately placed within the frame for a reason in order to create specific emotions and the desired narrative that might not be achievable in an unconstructed image.  Cotton (2014, p.52) tells us that ‘tableau photography often alludes to the lighting used on a film set, with lights spotted in a number of places to create a simulated naturalism and in anticipation of actors moving through the scene.’

Whilst some tableau photographers draw on specific sources such as paintings for their narratives (for example Jeff Wall and Sam Taylor Wood), others such as Liza May Post prefer to produce more ambiguous, unreferenced narratives.  Cotton (2014, p. 57) writes that ‘A dreamlike quality is often created by reducing the specificity of a place and culture to such a degree that it closes down our expectation of uncovering the ‘where and when’ of a photograph’

The course notes suggest that we look at the tableaux images of Jeff Wall.  A Canadian photographer, Wall is well-known for both his ornate tableau work and his construction of banal ‘everyday’ scenes (the latter discussed in an earlier post here).  Taking his tableau influences from a wide art spectrum including literature and nineteenth-century paintings, Wall deliberately uses theatrical elements within his tableaux to create an impact for the viewer as well as backlighting his large colour transparencies on lightboxes in order to give them an extra vibrance.  Stemmrich, cited in Hamblin (2010, pp.11-12) writes of Wall’s lightboxes ‘creating a stage-like situation in which the light that saturates the images and glows on the observer extends the carefully constructed image space into the space of the observer.’

Using nineteenth-century art as an influence, one of Wall’s first forays into tableau photography was The Destroyed Room (1978).  The Tate gallery website informs us that Wall looked to a painting by Eugène Delacroix, The Death of Sardanapalus (1827), for his inspiration, echoing the composition and colour palette of Delacroix.  Interestingly, unlike a lot of Wall’s work, if the image is inspected carefully it can be seen that the room is very much a staged set-up.

Fried (2008) tells us of three pictures that Wall has constructed based on literary texts and discusses one of these, After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (1999-2001), in depth.  A cinematographic image influenced by Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man, Wall painstakingly recreated the character’s room as described at the beginning of the book, deliberately creating a chaos to portray how he saw the character’s mental and emotional state.  Enough of the subject’s profile is visible for the viewer to see that the character appears in complete absorption with the task he is undertaking and his placing deep within the picture increases the sense of his aloneness and disconnection whilst also giving us a feeling of voyeurism.  As Fried (2008) writes, ‘Wall’s picture goes far beyond Ellison’s prologue in seeking to recreate the world [author italics] of the Invisible Man … ‘ with Wall commenting ‘My picture suggests that, like Ellison, the narrator took if not seven years at least some considerable time to write his book, and that he has lived in the cellar all that time.’ (Fried, 2008, p.46), effectively building his own narrative from what he has read.

Wall not only painstakingly constructs his tableau scenes in front of the camera, he has also been known to use digital montage within his images, one such example being Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) (1992).  Containing dead Russian soldiers reanimated by Wall, we realise that what we are looking at, far being from a typical battlefield scene, is in fact pure fantasy, albeit containing some very black humour.  ‘Dead soldiers don’t talk, here they do’ writes Fried (2008, p.32).  Sontag, cited in Fried (2008), writes that for her the decisive feature of the image is that ‘no one is looking out of the picture’ (ibid., p32,) that the dead are no longer interested in the living, they have nothing to say to the viewer who has not experienced what they themselves have gone through and do not understand.

A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai)  (1993), is another Wall image where the use of digital montage features, seeming at first glance like a candid, everyday moment. Theatrically staged and referenced from the Japanese woodcut A High Wind in Yeijiri by Hokusai, Wall took a series of images over five months using actors and effects (Campany, 2003) to create a tableau that appears on initial inspection to be capturing a snapshot moment in time.

What do I take away from Wall’s tableau work?  I’m not sure really.  I admire the amount of detail and effort that goes into his pieces, but the complex images he produces don’t really inspire me to think about doing work along similar lines.  I think that he is one photographer whose work I can appreciate without the desire to emulate his style in my own practice.

Update:

Since drafting this piece, i have come up with an idea for my final assignment which is based on film noir, a genre that Wall identified with in some of his later work, so I will be researching this area of his  practice for influence and inspiration.

References:

[Anon.] (2005) Jeff Wall: room guide, room 6 [online].  Tate.  Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/room-guide/jeff-wall-room-1  [accessed 17 April 2015]

Boothroyd, S. (2014) Photography 1 Context and Narrative.  Barnsley: Open College of the Arts

Campany, D. (ed.) (2003) Art and Photography.  London: Phaidon

Cotton, C. (2014).  The Photograph as Contemporary Art (3^rd ed.)  London: Thames & Hudson

Delacroix, E. (1827) The Death of Sardanapalus [online painting].  Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Available from http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/82626.html [accessed 17 April 2015]

Fried, M. (2008) Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before.  New Haven: Yale University Press

Stemmrich, G. (2003) Between Exaltation and Musing Contemplation: Jeff Wall’s Restitution of the Program of Peinture de la Vie Moderne In: Holert, E. (ed.) (2003) Jeff Wall: Photographs.  Köln: Walther König.  Cited in Hamblin, L. (2010) The Tableau, the Real and the Uncanny [online].  Available from http://www.lukearhamblin.com/The%20Tableau…pdf  [accessed 16 April 2015]

Wall, J. (1978) The Destroyed Room [online image].  Art Gallery of Western Australia                         Available from http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/exhibitions/Jeff-Wall-Photographs.asp  [accessed  17 April 2015]

Wall, J. (1992) Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) [photograph] [online]. Phaidon.   Available from http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2010/march/30/the-world-of-jeff-wall/?idx=2&idx=2   [first accessed 25 November 2014]

Wall, J. (1993)  A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai) [online image].  Tate.   Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t06951  [accessed 17 April 2015]

Wall, J, (1999-2000) After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue [online image].  The Tate.  Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/room-guide/jeff-wall-room-6    [accessed 17 April 2015]

Research point: Jeff Wall – ‘Insomnia’ (1994)

The course notes suggest that we read Beneath the Surface, a post on the WeAreOCA website by OCA tutor Sharon Boothroyd who sets out to deconstruct Jeff Wall’s Insomnia (1994) image. Boothroyd looks at firstly the denotations of the image and and then the connotations, showing us how the photographer has delivered certain information to us through a series of carefully selected signs and signifiers.

Boothroyd writes about the eeriness of the kitchen, the starkness and the sense of unease, of unrest that one feels when looking at the image:-

‘The cold colours of the cupboards and the starkness of the scene, the harsh lighting and the hotspots, give a kind of eerie feel.  It connotes a place of discomfort; of coldness and unease which we can sense even though we cannot actually be in that kitchen’

(Boothroyd, 2012)

Studying the image I can also see other aspects that give discomfort:

• The positioning of the table and chairs lead the viewer’s eye into the picture, yet the room is not welcoming, the chairs having their side/back towards the viewer
• The positioning of the man under the table – why is he not sitting at the table having a warm drink? He appears to be clutching a towel of some sort – is this out of frustration or as a comforter?
• The mark on the left-hand wall showing where a clock once was, giving a feeling of hopelessness, of time passing without an end
• The verticals and horizontals in the image are not true, disconcerting and jarring the eye.

The title ‘Insomnia’ helps with our understanding of the image.  Without this our minds expand the possible context – could the man be ill? Depressed? Suicidal?  The title softens the image yet also narrows the meaning, gives us an understanding, tells us of a problem that is probably familiar to many. This demonstrates that text is an important sign that needs to be decoded when one is interpreting an image.

References:

Boothroyd, S. (2012). Beneath the Surface. WeAreOCA.  Available from http://weareoca.com/photography/beneath-the-surface/  [accessed 13 March 2015]

Exercise: Nigel Shafran – ‘Washing Up’ (2000)

We are asked to look at Nigel Shafran’s series of images entitled Washing Up (2000) and then to respond to some questions.Washing Up is a series of images taken by Shafran in 2000 of completed washing up, usually in his own kitchen but sometimes elsewhere.  The photographs are accompanied by text detailing what he ate and sometimes other interesting snippets of information, for example who else was present at the meal.The first thing that struck me about Washing Up is how organised and structured Shafran’s images are.  The kitchen items are stacked neatly into sculptural forms with no untidy clutter lying about, which gives us an insight into the dish-washer’s personality (we are not told whether it is Shafran or his partner Ruth who has done the washing up).  This neatness and use of form reminds me of Thomas Demand’s image Sink (Spüle) (1997); although different in composition and construction (Demand’s ‘sink’ was a paper model) I immediately felt a similarity with Shafran’s images.

I wondered why Shafran chose washing up as a subject and I found the answer in an interview he gave to Paul Elliman in 2000:

‘I wanted to start the New Year with something  optimistic.  And personal.  Something with lots of shapes, where shapes would change, keep changing.  Also something in which the light was important, the kitchen window or the overhead kitchen light, I mean.  I really wanted to have one that was lit by lightning, haven’t got that yet. There are signs of ageing in it, like signs of time, of course’.

(Elliman, 2000)

What I like about this series is its simple style and how Shafran makes ordinary, everyday items into an interesting composition which gives rise to many questions.   For once I agree with Charlotte Cotton who writes:

‘With an understated photographic style, use of ambient light and relatively long exposures, he transforms these scenes into poetic observations about the ways we conduct our lives through our unconscious acts of ordering, stacking and displaying objects. There is something highly intuitive in Shafran’s way of working.  He resists the urge to construct a scene to be photographed ; rather, his is a process of staying attuned to the possibilities of everyday subjects as a means of exploring our characters and ways of life’

(Cotton, 2014, p.121)

Question: did it surprise you that this was taken by a man?  Why?

No, not at all.  In fact the question did not even cross my mind.  I think this is due to my recent research into photographers such as Thomas Demand and Jeff Wall where I’ve learned that such stereotypes do not seem to exist now in contemporary photography.

Question: in your opinion does gender contribute to the creation of an image?

In general I think the creation of an image is more due to the interests and personality of the photographer than their gender.  However I do believe that men and women have different ways of looking at things and this can come across in their interpretation of a subject or theme.

Question: what does this series achieve by not including people?

It makes me very happy!  Seriously, I think that the lack of people gives far more depth to the image than if they were present.  We know that a person was there (the washing up is done) so Shafran’s images convey a presence of absence, adding a sense of the passing of time. The viewer is encouraged to explore and to trace the human activity from the evidence left behind – who was there?  What did they look like?  I also think that the inclusion of people would also change the tone of the series completely from still life (fine art even?) towards social documentary.

Question: do you regard them as interesting ‘still life’ compositions?

On an aesthetic level I find the shapes, lighting and splashes of colour give interest to what could be seen initially as quite banal images.  Shafran has made the ordinary into something artistic and I really like his use of natural light.  Looking deeper, I like the way the images provide a visual punctuation mark, a comma, in the daily routine – cooking, eating, washing up, the putting away of dry dishes so we are invited to think about what has happened before and what will happen after.  We are told a little – the composition of the meal that had just been eaten and sometimes who was present – which whets our appetite to know more.

My main take-away from Shafran’s work in relation to my own practice is that everyday subjects, ones that might be considered banal even, have their worth photographically on a number of levels.  I find it is very easy to overlook, maybe dismiss even, what is immediately around me in search of the ‘great and the good’ so Shafran’s images are a timely reminder of what I have been missing and of a need to really look, rather than just see.

References:

Cotton, C. (2014) The Photograph as Contemporary Art.  3^rd ed.  London: Thames & Hudson

Demand, T. (1997) Spüle. [photograph] [online image]. Bundesverband deutscher Kunstversteigerer e.V.   Available from http://service.kunstversteigerer.de/de/i/5201304/p/1/ [accessed 16 January 2015]

Elliman P. (2000)   Interview with Paul Elliman, Fig-1. [online].  Nigel Shafran.  Available from http://www.nigelshafran.com/pages/texts_pages/002texts.html  [accessed 16 January 2015]

Shafran, N. (2000) Washing Up [online images].  Nigel Shafran.  Available from http://www.nigelshafran.com/pages/washing_up_pages/001washing_up_pages.html [accessed 16 January 2015]

Photographer: Jeff Wall

Alongside Thomas Demand, Jeff Wall is another photographer that my tutor suggested I look at with regard to how he interrogates the notion of photography’s ‘truth’.

Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer who produces very large colour transparencies which are backlit on lightboxes to give them extra vibrance.  Looking at his work it appears to fall into two distinct strands – the first being the production of tableaux (large complex images which Wall constructed using stage sets, often with both a cast and crew) of which many take influence from art history and secondly the photographing of more banal ‘everyday’ scenes.

The photographic tableau combines the art forms of photography and theatre and acts out a scenario that has been set-up by the photographer (Hamblin, 2010).  Wall takes his influences from a wide art spectrum including literature and nineteenth-century painting; one of his most famous images Picture for Women 1979 directly references Edouard Manet’s work Un Bar aux Folies-Bergères (Tate, 2005a) and has been meticulously composed and staged by Wall, a true mis-en-scène.  Wall’s tableaux each depict a snapshot, a single moment and the viewer is left to construct for themselves in their own minds what events took place before and after, leaving the image open to varying interpretations.

Wall’s ‘everyday’ images appear documentary in style; ordinary scenes that you might come across in everyday life.  However, like Demand, all is not what it seems; the majority of Wall’s images are constructed using actors and staged compositions.  What looks like a shot grabbed straight off the street has in fact been preconceived and painstakingly built and his well-known image Mimic (1982) is a reconstruction of an earlier event seen by Wall, a good example of where the viewer could easily confuse truth with fiction.  Unlike Demand, the deception cannot be seen in the majority of Wall’s images themselves, it is only through context – namely if the viewer has knowledge of Wall’s methods – that the image is revealed to be staged and not representing the truth, not showing ‘the decisive moment’.

At this early stage in my studies I admit that I struggled at first with a lot of Wall’s work. Historically-based tableaux aside, I wondered why he goes to the trouble of painstakingly creating his images rather than using ‘found’ situations, and I asked myself what his motivations are.  One of my assumptions was that Wall wants (or needs) to have full control of both the image-making process and of the final image but I felt that there had to be more to it than this so I posed the question on the OCA Flickr forum.  I got some very helpful leads for investigation as well as suggestions for further reading from both tutors and other students and following these up has been both fruitful and enlightening, demonstrating once again the benefits of an online OCA community and with thanks in particular to the tutors who contribute their time for free.

Starting with the practical side, Wall takes most of his images with a large format camera.  Not being the ideal equipment for street photography, a genre that he wanted to explore, Wall’s solution was to construct his images, recreating events that he had seen on the street with the assistance of non-professional actors (Tate, 2005b).  It was suggested by another OCA student that Wall takes this opportunity to create (or recreate) images in order to deliver a statement or message to the viewer and indeed looking more deeply into his street images this can be seen once you look for it.  He is particularly interested in ‘micro-gestures’, those tiny gestures which are automatic and yet hint at tensions in society (Tate, 2005). ‘Mimic’ (1982) is a good example of this, a scene seen previously by Wall and painstakingly recreated to make a social comment.  Wall himself says ‘Mimic was about racism in some way, about hostile gestures between races, but I’m glad the picture itself is good and it doesn’t need that to be successful’ (Denes, 2005).  

I was also directed towards  Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) (1992) and I think it is this image, grotesque as it appears, out of all Wall’s work that I looked at, together with associated writings from Fried (2008) and Sontag (2003, cited in Fried, 2008) which finally made me better understand Wall’s intent as a photographer.  A digital montage which is obviously constructed and not true-to-life (it depicts dead Russian soldiers reanimated by Wall), I found it deeply moving and one that, despite its obvious staging and black humour, really brings home the truth of the horror of war and the pain and suffering it causes.  Sontag, cited in Fried (2008), writes that for her the decisive feature of the image is that ‘no one is looking out of the picture’ (ibid., p32,) that the dead are no longer interested in the living, they have nothing to say to the viewer who has not experienced what they themselves have gone through and do not understand.  I don’t always agree with Sontag but her position here resonates with me.

Wall is a photographer that I had come across previously but had not actively looked into before and, as stated earlier, initally I found his work and practice difficult to comprehend. Further research provided me with a good insight into how Wall sees scenes and how he treats these in order to make social and / or political comments by drawing the viewer’s attention to certain specifics.  What I do find a little difficult is that a viewer who is unfamiliar with Wall’s practice could easily be duped into thinking that Wall’s documentary and street style images demonstrate reality and show the truth (insofar as a photograph can ever reflect the truth) as they appear to capture genuine moments.   Wall’s work reminds me of how important it is to have an understanding of photographic culture in order to be contextually informed; knowing that Wall’s images are staged would allow the viewer to accept what he sees for what it is (i.e. without a feeling of deception) and also to actively look for the statement that Wall is making.

There is an interesting compilation of some of Wall’s work available on the Museum of Modern Art’s website entitled Jeff Wall  In His Own Words.

At this present stage of my studies I am not particularly interested in constructing scenes such as Wall’s however I’m finding that I can appreciate, even be inspired by photographers without the desire to emulate their style.  I can acknowledge the way they work and understand what they are trying to achieve without feeling that the need to always reference this to my own practice.  Everything I learn about other photographers, even if they do not influence me at the time, fits into the building of my overall knowledge of photographic culture and creates useful reference points.  I’m finding increasingly now when studying that I can cross-refer to other photographers and artists’ work that I’ve come across thereby adding further pieces into my cultural understanding.

References:

Fried, M. (2008) Why photography matters as art as never before. New Haven: Yale University Press

Hamblin, L.A.R. (2010) The Tableau, the Real and the Uncanny [online].   Luke A. R. Hamblin. Available from http://www.lukearhamblin.com/The%20Tableau…pdf  [accessed 13 November 2014]

Denes, M. (2005) Picture Perfect [online]. The Guardian newspaper. Available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2005/oct/15/art [accessed 13 November 2014]

Museum of Modern Art (2007)  Jeff Wall In His Own Words [online].  Available from http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2007/jeffwall/  [accessed 24 November 2014]

Sontag, S. (2003) Regarding the Pain of Others. Cited in Fried, M. (2008) Why photography matters as art as never before. New Haven: Yale University Press, p.32

Tate (2005a) Jeff Wall. Photographs 1978-2004 Tate Modern: Exhibition 21 October 2005 – 8 January 2006 [online]. Tate.  Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/node/236905/infocus/section1/img4.shtm [accessed 18 November 2014]

Tate (2005b) Jeff Wall: room guide, room 3 [online]. Tate. Available from http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/room-guide/jeff-wall-room-3  [accessed 26 November 2014]

Wall, J. (1992) Dead Troops Talk (a vision after an ambush of a Red Army Patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986) [photograph] [online]. Phaidon.   Available from http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/picture-galleries/2010/march/30/the-world-of-jeff-wall/?idx=2&idx=2   [accessed 25 November 2014]

Wall, J. (1982) Mimic [photograph] [online]. Pictify.com.  Available from http://pictify.com/19712/jeff-wall-mimic-1982   [accessed 25 November 2014]