Liminal Space vs Tableau Photography

リミナル・スペース / タブロー写真

Liminal Space comes from Internet Aesthetics and Tableau Photography from Photography Movements. One is aesthetic and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.

Liminal Space

Liminal Space — 無人のショッピングセンター（CC BY-SA 4.0）Liminal Space — モールの通路（CC BY 4.0）Liminal Space — 深夜の商業施設（CC BY-SA 4.0）

Photographs transitional spaces empty when people ought to be in them, drawing out déjà vu, loneliness and the sense that time has stopped. The subjects carry their own names in circulation, from the empty indoor pool to the night corridor to the mall after closing.

Tableau Photography

Tableau Photography — キャメロン『リア王と三人の娘』1872 — Wikimedia Commons / CC0Tableau Photography — F・ホランド・デイによる演出肖像 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainTableau Photography — キャメロン『ミューズのささやき』1865 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Assembles the scene before the shutter and holds it in a single print made to hang like a painting, its figures acting as if no viewer were there.

Liminal SpaceTableau Photography
Eralate-2010s–1970s
FamilyInternet AestheticsPhotography Movements
KindAestheticStyle
CuesEmpty corridors / Fluorescent light / Dated interiors / Public space after midnightA single large print made to hang / Figures who never look back at you / Interiors and streets built to the last corner / Lighting borrowed from cinema
Best used forPhotographing empty facilities at night to show that time has stopped · Choosing settings for work about waiting and passing throughRestaging the conventions of advertising or news images to cast doubt on them · Building a story into one frame meant for exhibition, not for record
TypeKeep the existing wayfinding signs and add no new letteringMake the text in the frame as a prop rather than borrowing a typeface
CompositionShoot corridors head on in one point perspective with nobody presentFix gaze and hand positions in advance and block the frame like a painting
MaterialGreenish fluorescent white, dated flooring, damp reflections, weak shadowsBuilt sets or models, cinematic lighting, large format shot and printed big
CautionThe more unusual the building, the less it touches memory, because the sense of having been here only arrives in ordinary places everyone has passed through.Staging that only imitates a natural record leaves the assumption that photographs record reality untouched, and the whole reason for constructing the scene disappears.

Put these two together

Internet Aesthetics ／ Photography Movements

IndexStyle