Fabrication and Staged Photography

Staged photographs (or tableau photographs, as they have come to be called), are almost as old as the medium itself. In 1840, less than a year after the official announcement of the invention of photography, the French photographer Hippolyte Bayard staged a photograph of himself as a drowned man. The macabre joke, which included a suicide note, was his way of protesting having been ignored as one of photography’s inventors. Bayard knew that the reality attributed to photographs would work in his favor making it difficult to determine if he was indeed dead, or simply had his eyes closed. What we learn from Bayard’s photograph is that while the camera doesn’t lie, neither is it capable of telling the truth. What the camera can do is record the appearance of things in a manner unequaled by any other visual medium. The result is a paradoxical situation in which an event staged for the camera might be easily understood as the truth. One need but imagine the possibilities.....

It is from this conceptual framework that tableau photography emerges. These picture makers are acutely aware that the fictive can be presented within the matrix of photographic truth, and that photographic truth may indeed be fictive. By embracing the real and artificial in photography, they shift attention from how a photograph represents reality to how reality can be presented in a photograph. Each of these artists challenges the traditional role of the photograph as an objective documentation of reality.

Their photographs may be fabricated, be we need not let their fictive nature prevent us from moving beyond the surface of their appearance. Meaning, if it is to be found, will be a result of an active and inquisitive intelligence that can tolerate and thrive upon ambiguity, and is willing to suspend disbelief long enough to make the leap from the apparent facts of the photograph to its possible symbols. We need not forget we are looking at a photograph, but we must always remember that we are also looking at a picture.

These are the some of the artists working with photographic tableaus.
Lots of them are not included in the lecture. Please find time to research artists not covered in the lecture.

Hippolyte Bayard
Jeff Wall
Gregory Crewdson
Cindy Sherman
Patrick Nagatani
Tracey Moffat
Les Krims
Joel Peter-Witkin
Lucas Samaras
Judy Dater
David Levanthal
William Wegman
Eilleen Cowin
Sandy Skoglund
James Casbere
Philip Lorca diCorcia
Andrea Serrano
Robert Mapplethorpe
Carrie Mae Weems
Lorna Simpson
Mathew Barney
Vanessa Beacroft
Thomas Demand
Mariko Mori
Sam Taylor-Wood
John Armleder
Yinka Shonicare
Boyd Webb
Duane Michals
Laurie Simmons
Gerlovina &Gerlovin
Robert ParkeHarrison
David Hilliard
Eleanor Antin
Anthony Goicolea
Sara Small (http://sarahsmall.com/tableau-vivant/past-tableaux/past-tableaux-gallery)
AEF+F


Watch Thomas Demand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UA2AdLo0rDQ
Thomas Demand: https://www.nowness.com/story/thomas-demand-paper-weight
Watch Jeff Wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg8bB0zs3HQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVSEVlqYUw

WasteLand :http://www.hulu.com/watch/397079
AES+F, Feast of Trimalchio : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVOgKwMLggw
Laurie Simmons: http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/laurie-simmons
Sandy Skoglund: http://wn.com/sandy_skoglund
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Watch Sarah Small' s 2011 performance: http://sarahsmall.com/tableau-vivant