Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Photorealism: Keep the photograph's own crop and do not recompose the frame
- Type
- Set in Photorealism's manner (Let lettering appear inside the frame as signage, never laid over the image from outside), and let Tableau Photography's lettering (Make the text in the frame as a prop rather than borrowing a typeface) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Photorealism's material (Paint grain and fringing into a surface smoothed of every brushmark, letting no substrate texture show); bring in exactly one thing from Tableau Photography (Built sets or models, cinematic lighting, large format shot and printed big).
- Colour
- Build on #c8d2d8, #008cd3, #0e1316 and admit one accent from #e4ddd2, #92705e, #2c2623.
Where they fight
- Photorealism and Tableau Photography share no intent, so the contrast has to become the subject rather than something to smooth over.
Caution
- Photorealism Cleaning up the lens artefacts: polish out the focus fall-off, the grain and the fringing and the picture stops reading as a photograph made by hand, leaving airless illustration.
- Tableau Photography Staging that only imitates a natural record leaves the assumption that photographs record reality untouched, and the whole reason for constructing the scene disappears.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Photorealism (style, 1968–1980s) and their accent from Tableau Photography (style, 1970s). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Photorealism exists for: advertising for cars and watches where the reflections in chrome and glass are the subject, or books and features on the city and consumer culture that keep the information a mechanical eye records. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Photorealism - Reflections and highlights taken from the photograph - Depth of field painted exactly as the lens gave it - Commercial subjects drawn from the city - A smooth surface with every brushmark erased Composition: Keep the photograph's own crop and do not recompose the frame. Type and lettering: Let lettering appear inside the frame as signage, never laid over the image from outside. ## Accent comes from Tableau Photography, used sparingly - A 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 Let one material quality come from it: Built sets or models, cinematic lighting, large format shot and printed big. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #c8d2d8, carry the structure in #008cd3 and #0e1316, and let a single accent come from #92705e. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: technique, futurity, trust, rebellion, luxury, play. ## Where they fight - Photorealism and Tableau Photography share no intent, so the contrast has to become the subject rather than something to smooth over. ## What goes wrong - Photorealism: Cleaning up the lens artefacts: polish out the focus fall-off, the grain and the fringing and the picture stops reading as a photograph made by hand, leaving airless illustration. - Tableau Photography: Staging that only imitates a natural record leaves the assumption that photographs record reality untouched, and the whole reason for constructing the scene disappears. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Photorealism 1968–1980s / Style / Postwar American Art
A movement that transfers the photograph itself onto the canvas, rebuilding by hand the quantity of information a mechanical eye records. Shop-window reflections, the warp of chrome, diner neon: the subject is fixed on the surface together with the photograph's own focus, grain and chromatic fringing. What is painted is not what was seen but the fact that a camera saw it that way.
- Tableau Photography 1970s / Style / Photography Movements
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.
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