The Nude Tableau: Questions
I found this image floating about on Tumblr, devoid (as usual) of any attribution. It features, I believe, a tableau of three live models, although at this level of photographic detail I cannot swear they aren’t exhibition-quality wax figures. But what’s going on? Is it a bordello lineup, an exhibition or performance, what? Looking closely at the details in the full version only multiplies the questions. Who or what are the larger-than-life heroic statues on each side of the stage, and who is the overdressed young beauty looking back through her veil at the camera? Questions, so many questions!
So I run the basic provenance research trapline, and what do I find? Nothing! No, what I find is worse than nothing, because there on Flickr is a different photo of a very similar (and yet bizarrely different) scene. This version is notable for the naked man (statue? mannequin?) standing where the veiled woman was sitting in the first photo, and for what look like German university/academic captions that seem to have more to do with bureaucratic branding than actual useful captioning:
If the stances or facial expressions of the three women have changed at all during the foreground scene change, I can’t make it out. Skilled models or even more skillful sculpture? More basically, WFT is going on with these tableaux? I did my research and all I got was more questions. So it goes, some days…
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The captions are certainly not German. They seem to be Dutch
Judging from the word “stralingsmeting” (“radiation measurement”), I would hazard a guess that this was made for a photography course?
The semi-nude male statue could also have been inserted later to cover up the women on the left.
Ooh, thanks, especially for the language ID. It’s not easy to tell the difference when you don’t know either one!
I hadn’t considered the “darkroom Photoshop” explanation, though I should have. Good notion!
The male figure on the left with the hat is an overlay of some nature. A manipulation. If you look carefully the figure has a slightly warm cast to its overall gray. A slight pinkish maroon I’d say. The rest of the original photo is a cooler gray, or more neutral actually. Otherwise I’m willing to bet they are from the same pose. A single click of the lens. It would be quite difficult to NOT have more differences over the period of time it would take to even place a large cutout figure into the camera’s field of view in a second pose. Facial expressions would change, head angles, feet would shift, weights would shift from one foot to another causing differing hip tilts and spacing between the knees, etc. Not a bad job though. I’ve certainly seen worse!
Er… by the way, this will be more noticeable if you greatly enlarge an area including the border of the male image.
It occurred to me that this may be hard for some people to see if they don’t already know what to look for.
The original is likely a “true” black and white image, created photographically by something akin to silver tarnish. The overlay, likely a much more modern image may well have been created artificially from a color image.
Black and white images today are made much like color TV screens showing a vintage black and white film. The screen creates the white via a mix of nearly microscopic Ben-Day-dot ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Day_dots ), -like grains of the colors of blue green an red behind a black screen-like matrix. The colored dots are adjusted so that theoretically, no one color dominates, but there’s usually a slight tint.
Its almost impossible to get a real black and white photo print from a normal commercial establishment these days. They don’t use the same process as our ancestors did. The layers of color grains in photo prints under a powerful microscope would amaze you!
Thanks, Dr. Whiplash! Darkroom/photographic nerdery was still a thing when I was a youth, but I never got exposed to it so it’s all pretty much a mystery to me. I’m a Photoshop kid myself. I appreciate the educational commentary!
The image with the male nude also appears to have vertical lines in the background image suggesting it was scanned then modified with the male nude overlay which does not show any lines….
So I suspect we have the original image with its mysteries and a later modification of it possibly recent enough that some digitalization was involved. I do not think the second image was done with darkroom tricks, though it is amazing what could be done with silver based black and white film and print processing.
To do this in a darkroom one would first prepare a negative from the original print (assuming one did not own the original negative). Next from the negative film image of the nude man and of the background one would produce prints of each at a specific size. The prints would be placed on top of each other and cut along the edge of the naked man through both prints – this produces two masks – that fit together to resemble the final image like a jigsaw puzzle. In the final step one would prepare a print from the film negative in two steps – one where the nude man mask is placed on the print paper and the background exposed from the background negative, then the background mask is placed on the print paper and the nude man is exposed from the nude man negative. The difficulty is the precise positioning of the masks so the final print does not show a line of over exposure or under exposure where the masks fit together.
I would think it is a life class for artists. The widow would be in a better situation to follow her artistic bent than most ladies of the time. The three graces was a popular theme. If you look at the statue on the right it has been flayed to show muscular and skeletal detail. On the drapery at the left at an angle to us there is a face drawn at the top, about two feet in height.
The light appears to come from above, perhaps the kind of skylight you might have in an artist’s studio.
The lady is wearing a painter’s smock style of dress, though in respectable black. The hat, I am guessing, would be fashionable and expensive.
The chair has a stand attached that might be used to attach a sketch pad. Or music if this is a private tableau vivant show.