Masquerade & Tableau Workshop

 During this work shop, we looked at the idea of staged photographs, almost creating a story from a still, leaving the viewer not knowing the rest of the narrative. In doing so, we looked at photographers such Cindy Sherman, Gregory Crewsdon, Jeff Wall and Duane Michals, amongst many more. Whilst looking at all of their works, it became very obvious that everything in the frame was put there for a reason, every prop, angle and positioning was done so specifically to create the right feeling.

CINDY SHERMAN

'Untitled Film Stills'

1977 - 1980

Sherman's film stills are very theatrical and mysterious. She takes on many roles as she becomes a completely different, stereotypical female character for each one, making her almost unrecognisable. Each still is staged to resemble scenes from 1950's and 60's films. Her focus lay with the costumes, sets, lighting and facial expressions. This series is dramatised, it imitates cinematic camera angles and lighting.

This image builds on the idea that Sherman's character here is a heroin. The image creates suspense as the female character is completely captivated by whatever is out of the frame. This leaves the audience in wondering what is going on. 

I really like Sherman's idea of working with a very cinematic style of photography. In addition,  I also think it is very interesting that she creates this narrative through this one photo. The viewer is completely unaware at what happened before or after that frame and leaves them to use their imagination in conjuring one up.

JEFF WALL

'The Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, The Prologue'

1999 - 2001

Jeff Wall drew inspiration from Ralph Ellison's 'The Invisible Man', he wanted to make a picture out of this story. The ceiling is covered in light bulbs all at different heights, from the rugs to the crockery, furnishing and books, Wall takes staging a photograph to a whole new level. He approached it as a film set and much like an Art Director he had to consider every object that was going to be put in this room. Wall only had a page and the prologue worth of description so he had to do much research on what furnishing and style was appropriate for this time period set in the novel.

DUANE MICHALS

'The Annunciation'

1968

'The Fallen Angel'

Duane Michals creates a narrative within a series of photographs. He reflects his own experiences within his work but also believes in the imagination. Michals says works by the idea of 'we see what we want to see'. In addition he believes that photography is incapable of revealing a persons private nature. He uses natural lighting as well as whats available to him.

We were given a choice of famous photographs and our task was to focus on lighting and camera angles in order to recreate them in our groups. It was interesting to see how quickly with such minimal planning, could we recreate these famous images.

SAMUEL FOSSO

'African Spirits'

2008, Printed 2009

OUR OWN TAKE

FEATURING WILL.

For this photograph we focused on how we could create no shadows behind the subject. We achieved this by moving him further away from the background. We put the camera on to the black and white setting to mimic the original and helped with lighting.

BARRINGTON LATEGAN

'Twiggy'

1966

                                                   

For this specific shot, we can see from the original that the lighting is very soft. We created a soft box in order to capture this lighting style. We placed the lighting directly in front of the Claudia so we could get a slight shadow from the side of her face much like in the original photo.

Overall, the work shop was very interesting as I hadn't previously thought about completely staging a photograph, much like Madame Yevonde Middleton's self portraits. It made me really consider and pay far much more attention to the lighting. Furthermore, it was a perfect opportunity to experiment with the lighting and see what different effects we could create. I am very keen on the idea of creating a whole narrative from an image or using a source of inspiration like Jeff Wall, perhaps use a piece of text that sticks with me?