For my Narrative Tableau project, I wanted to share an old story that has been passed down in my family along with a mindful twist to leave the audience thinking.
My great grandmother told our family a story about how she grew up in the years of the Great Depression on a very poor farm. She grew up so poor that she never owned a baby doll so she had to cut out paper dolls from newspapers and pictures. One day, she was playing with them and her older sister had burned them because my grandmother needed to focus on the responsibility of the farm.
My grandmother was just a young child, but I chose a teenage model to leave the audience guessing on maturity level. I also chose her hairstyle and clothing style to match that of a young lady in the 1930s era. The paper dolls are also pictured from an early era along with handcrafted little doll furniture. The overall image has a sepia gradient tone, because I wanted to give the narrative shot a vintage appeal.
Irene and the Paper Dolls
f/4.5 1/640 ISO100
Award-Winning with Best of Jury
Spring 2017
The image shown below shows my set up and more of the narrative's surrounding elements. This was also a secondary shot, I would have chosen.
Irene and the Paper Dolls No. 2
