# Staged tableau photography

> Pictures that look like a moment from a film: an ordinary room, street or suburb in which a figure is caught mid-action, glancing at something outside the frame, with a story implied but never told. Everything is arranged in advance: actors or the artist in role, chosen locations or built sets, cinema lighting at dusk, and later digital montage of many exposures. The results are single images, often large colour prints or lightboxes, sometimes small black-and-white 'stills'.

- Period: 1977–present
- Where it began: New York and Vancouver in the late 1970s
- Kind: Staged & conceptual
- Also called: Tableau photography, Directorial mode, Constructed photography, Cinematographic photography
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/staged-tableau/

## How the look is made

- Direct the scene: cast the figures, choose or build the set and rehearse the gesture before you expose.
- Show one ordinary moment that implies a before and an after; leave the story unresolved.
- Keep the figure within a setting that explains it, at a middle distance, rarely looking at the lens.
- Light it like a film: mix dusk daylight with lamps, windows and hidden strobes.
- Make each picture complete in itself, and print or light it at the size of a painting.

## How it is lit

- Film lighting rigs at dusk: daylight fading to blue, mixed with lamps in windows, headlights and street lights.
- Hidden or remote strobes that single out a figure in a street or car park at twilight.
- Overcast daylight over a whole scene, with figures placed and timed by direction.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: the open sky, all around and above, soft.
- Lamp in the scene: a lamp, sign or screen, from behind, to the camera’s left, hard.
- Fill: a flash on the camera, from the camera, hard.

## Camera settings

28–50 mm · f/8–f/45 · 1/125–8 s · ISO 100–400 (on 8x10), inferred. Stops, times and film speeds are inferred.

## Directing people

Cast actors play a character caught between actions: absorbed in a task, reaching, walking or standing alone, eyes off the lens on something out of frame, face blank or quietly troubled; in group scenes each figure stays apart, not touching; hold the rehearsed gesture still, as if the film had been paused.

## Styling

Fully art-directed by a crew: actors in wardrobe chosen for the role, light make-up, a real house, street, yard or field picked as the location (or a built set), and props placed to hint at a story; nothing left as found.

## Before you shoot it

Its leading artists are living, and some works are self-portraits in role (Sherman) or portraits of vulnerable real people (diCorcia's Hustlers name the men and what they were paid): never prompt by an artist's name or recreate a specific picture, and never generate a 'staged' scene that depicts a real, identifiable person. When you stage with people, cast consenting adults and credit them. A generated tableau must be labelled as generated and never presented as a news or documentary photograph.

## Photographs

- Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993. Tate. © Jeff Wall. In copyright, linked: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t06951
- Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, from the series Twilight, 1998. Collection SFMOMA. © Gregory Crewdson. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.601/
- Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #13, 1978. SFMOMA, fractional and promised gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein. © Cindy Sherman, courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/2003.207/
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Andre Smith, 28 Years Old, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, $30, 1991. Collection SFMOMA. © Philip-Lorca diCorcia. In copyright, linked: https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/94.271/

## Sources

- Pictures Generation, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_Generation (Pictures at Artists Space, 24 Sept–29 Oct 1977, curated by Douglas Crimp, five artists; Crimp's 'quotation, excerptation, framing, and staging'; Sherman added in 1979; Met exhibition 2009 curated by Douglas Eklund)
- Untitled Film Stills, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untitled_Film_Stills (1977–80, 70 black-and-white prints, Sherman casts herself, references to 1950s–60s Hollywood, noir, B movies and art cinema; MoMA acquisition 1995)
- Jeff Wall, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Wall (backlit Cibachrome transparencies from 1977, The Destroyed Room 1978, Picture for Women 1979, Mimic 1982, A Sudden Gust of Wind 1993 with actors and about 100 photographs; 'documentary' vs 'cinematographic'; digital montage since the early 1990s)
- Gregory Crewdson, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Crewdson (film-production crews and cinema lighting, Twilight 1998–2002, Beneath the Roses 2003–08, small towns of western Massachusetts, cited films and Hopper)
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip-Lorca_diCorcia (staged compositions, friends posed in fictional interiors from the late 1970s, hidden lights in streets, Hustlers with a 6 × 9 Linhof and Polaroid tests, titles with name, age, hometown and fee)
- Staged photography, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staged_photography (the photographer stages everything like a director; A. D. Coleman's 'directorial mode', Artforum 1976; 'staged photography' as a term from 1987; tableau photography as a related term)
- Tate collection record T06951, Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wall-a-sudden-gust-of-wind-after-hokusai-t06951 (transparency on lightbox)
- SFMOMA collection records for Sherman, Untitled Film Still #13 (2003.207), Crewdson, Untitled from Twilight (99.601) and diCorcia, Andre Smith… (94.271): https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/99.601/ (dates, media, sizes)
- Gregory Crewdson – 25 years of Twilight, Avant Arte: https://avantarte.com/insights/articles/gregory-crewdson-25-years-of-twilight (all 40 Twilight images shot on a Sinar F1 8 × 10 camera with 300 mm and 210 mm lenses; tungsten, fluorescent and HMI lighting; each image merges several shots from one vantage point)
- An Interview with Gregory Crewdson, PetaPixel (18 May 2016): https://petapixel.com/2016/05/18/interview-gregory-crewdson/ (he shot 8 × 10 for many years before turning to digital)
- Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip-Lorca_diCorcia (for Hustlers he used a 6 × 9 Linhof view camera, positioned in advance with Polaroid tests)
- Cindy Sherman, The Complete Untitled Film Stills (Museum of Modern Art, 2003), artist's text, Monoskop: https://www.monoskop.org/images/b/b2/Sherman_Cindy_Complete_Untitled_Film_Stills.pdf (almost all interiors shot from a tripod, exteriors often handheld by friends; a flash held up while the camera was open for a few seconds (#48); a telephoto lens; rolls of film, at most six shots per character)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/staged-tableau/#sheet