Mrs Beverly (she of Jack and Beverly’s Images of Photographers) wrote to tell me about a lovely item they recently collected – a living picture, or clockwork tableau, from 1889 Germany.  Showing a photographer with his troublesome victim or portrait subject, this coloured image set in a wooden frame has a clockwork mechanism at the back that controls the moving parts – the hand on the lens, the legs of the boy, even his tongue sticking out at the most inappropriate times!  What a wonderful thing to have on your wall – simply wind it up and the little play acts out over and over.  The photographer lifts off the lens and the boy starts playing up – apparently a common theme in early photography humour!

There’s a video showing the movement over at Berverly and Jack’s site – high tech in 1889, I’m sure!  Quite lovely, and the possiblities for other scenes, more Steampunk scenes, bubble over in my mind!  I did try to find other information about Living Pictures and Clockwork Tableau – but instead I found an amusing wikipedia article on Tableau Vivant – particularly the amusing part about circumnavigating the English censors in WWII!  Any more information about more of these lovely creations would be appreciated!

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 at 6:34 pm by Tinkergirl and is filed under Steampunk Images.