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TABLEAU VIVANT
Tableau Vivant (correct plural: Tableaux Vivants) is French for "living picture." The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed artist's models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move. The approach thus marries the art forms of the stage with those of painting/photography, and as such it has been of interest to modern photographers.
On a stage
Before radio, film and television, tableaux vivants were popular forms of entertainment. Before the age of colour reproduction of images the tableau vivant (often abbreviated simply to tableau) was sometimes used to recreate paintings "on stage", based on an etching or sketch of the painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of tableaux presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings of a "live" theatre performance. They thus 'educated' their audience to understand the form taken by later Victorian and Edwardian era magic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative comic strips (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s).
Since English stage censorship often strictly forbade actresses to move when nude or semi-nude on stage, tableaux vivants also had a place in presenting erotic entertainment at private clubs (e.g.: the Windmill Theatre) and fairground sideshows (e.g.: see the film of A Taste of Honey). This approach was superseded by colour pornographic magazines from around the mid 1950s.
In photography
Tableau vivant was an approach to picture-making taken up by pioneers of early fine art photography, including David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson in the 1840s. Other notable examples are Oscar Gustave Rejlander's Two Ways of Life (1857) and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson's 'Xie' work with Alexandra Kitchin such as St. George and the Dragon (1875). Today, the approach is exemplified by fine art photographers and artists such as Justine Kurland, Roger Ballen, Jan Saudek, Sandy Skoglund, Gregory Crewdson and Bernard Faucon.
It is sometimes called "staged photography," but this is an imprecise term - since the simple posing of fashion models in the street is also 'staged photography'. Tableau vivant is a more precise term to use, if the staged picture obviously draws on the traditions and conventions of either the theatre or painting.
In film
D.W. Griffith used tableaux to emphasize dramatic moments in A Corner in Wheat.
Derek Jarman used the technique for some of his art films. So did Peter Greenaway.
Jean-Luc Godard, in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin, used the tableau setting for the entire factory scene in 1972's Tout va Bien.
See also
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