The staging in the photography – assembling scenes and telling stories

Abstract

This paper aims to understand historically what would be and how it has been constructed the staging in the photographic language. Based on the thoughts of Fontcuberta, Soulages and Rouillé, we reflect on categories such as performance, manipulation, fiction and truth. This is to show that, in spite of what common sense advocates and certain ontological theories of photography defend (especially Barthes, but also Kracauer, Krauss, among others), staging has always been part of the photographic process and today, at a time in which it is practiced more openly and consciously, a new field of experimentation opens to photography, new ways of seeing and show permeated by a desire to fable, a willingness to invent worlds and tell stories.

Keywords
photography; staging; manipulation; fiction; truth