Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

by Gregory Crewdson (Photographer), Rick Moody (Contributor)

Crewdson's most recent series of photographs, Twilight, are created as elaborately constructed film stills, catching the mysterious moment of time between before and after, revealing unknowable or unimaginable aspects of domestic reality. A cow lies on its back on the lawn between two houses while firemen secure the area and a man searches the sky. Could the cow have rained down from above? In another image stacks and stacks of inedible slices of bread - bearing an odd resemblance to the mysterious monoliths at Stonehenge - are watched over by a gathering of birds. Both entirely foreign and oddly familiar, these images are carefully orchestrated events that challenge our very notions of familiarity, undermining our sense of certainty. These eerie and evocative photographs pair beauty with horror, obsession with disgust, and the real with the surreal, suggesting narratives open to endless interpretations.

The book includes an essay written by fiction writer Rick Moody. The book and exhibitions are comprised of the forty images from his Twilight series which was begun in 1998 - these exhibitions and this book chronicle the completion of the series and mark the first time it will be seen in its entirety.

Genres: Photography, Art, Nonfiction, Art Design

112 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2002

About the author

Gregory Crewdson’s photographs have entered the American visual lexicon, taking their place alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch as indelible evocations of a silent psychological interzone between the everyday and the uncanny. Often working with a large team, Crewdson typically plans each image with meticulous attention to detail, orchestrating light, color, and production design to conjure dreamlike scenes infused with mystery and suspense. While the small-town settings of many of Crewdson’s images are broadly familiar, he is careful to avoid signifiers of identifiable sites and moments, establishing a world outside time.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Crewdson is a graduate of SUNY Purchase and the Yale University School of Art, where he is now director of graduate studies in photography. He lives and works in New York and Massachusetts. In a career spanning more than three decades, he has produced a succession of widely acclaimed bodies of work, from Natural Wonder (1992–97) to Cathedral of the Pines (2013–14). Beneath the Roses (2003–08), a series of pictures that took nearly ten years to complete—and which employed a crew of more than one hundred people—was the subject of the 2012 feature documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, by Ben Shapiro.

Reviews

[Gregsamsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's something wrong.



Large forest fowl pick around the edges of a dense thicket of columns made of stacked sandwiches on white bread. A giant cone of mounded flowers and moss appears in the middle of the street in a modest neighborhood, to block traffic and draw locals to stare and climb. Puzzling scenes of domestic, local, or supernatural strife are signalled by abandoned cars, befuddled emergency responders, or more extreme displacements inside and outside the home.





My favorite photographer is sort of not a photographer. Perhaps less of one if a photographer captures spontaneous reality, more than one if a photographer just takes pictures. Gregory Crewdson creates tableaux vivants not of mythical scenes or famous paintings, but of enigmatic disruptions of everyday North American life.

Ranging in appearance from avant garde installation pieces of gloom and organic matter to stills from a lost David Lynch movie, this collection's constructed photographic art pieces reverberate with one theme:

There's something wrong.

The settings are all suburban, and the spectrum of wrongness extends from just a hint of tone to the nightmarish:







Most of the photographs challenge the viewer to construct a narrative from the visual clues delivered in these moments of stasis which seem to precede or follow a dramatic event, some sort of violence that contrasts sharply with the stillness of the scene portrayed;





a few others blur into dreamland with surrealistic stretches of arranged oddness:





But the strangeness persists in scenes where its source is absent but seems to seep from the photographs through light, composition, and that just maybe there is something wrong but we've become blind to it through constant exposure.



The introduction is a forgettable piece by Rick Moody, who tries to weld the psychiatry practice of Crewdon's father and the photographer's previous dabbling in new wave bands (Moody never passes up a chance to educate us on how hip his music taste was) to Crewdson's strange work, with inelegant and unconvincing force.

But the urge to solve the mysteries the pictures present is forgivable, while a part of us (well, me anyway) wants them to remain just beyond the sensible.

[Erik B.K.K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hmmm... I only like 5 photos. Not nearly enough to justify buying the book. Not one of Crewdson's best.

The ones I did like:



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[Simeon Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cindy Sherman does suburbia, essentially. Same pastel flesh, same aquarium light. Downcast or brooding anonymous figures, some with a sexually flat affect. Mostly shot from a distance. I liked some of the photos a lot, but the crime scene renderings of dreamscapes got monotonous awfully quickly.

[Akash · Rating 5 out of 5]

গতকাল সারাদিন ছবিগুলোর দিকে থ'হয়ে তাকিয়ে ছিলাম।

মারাত্মক নিখুঁত ডিটেইলড কাজ! গোধুলীবেলার এমন বিস্ময়কর নিখুঁত ছবি আর দেখিনি। চল্লিশটা ছবির সবগুলো আপনাকে মুগ্ধ করবে।

[Yvonne]

I must say the house looks different now after finishing this book!
The uncanny is lurking everywhere...
Would love to go to an exhibition with Crewdson's work to see all the photographs blown up. I only saw one large Crewdson photograph in a mixed exhibition of American photography in Albertina, Vienna, til now.

[Star Shining Forever · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The uncanny is something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light,” muses the introduction.

A lot of times you’re not sure what you’re looking at and other times you’re pretty sure you’re not supposed to be looking at it. There’s a lot of female subjects but as they’re usually naked and/or pregnant, it feels more voyeuristic than thoughtful. Between the flower mountains, broken houses, spotlights and first responders, there’s a story to be found.

[Zioluc · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crewdson con numerosi modelli, set ricchi e luci articolate crea costruitissime scene oniriche: fenomeni sovrannaturali sconvolgono una cittadina tra luci divine (o aliene?), donne incinte che vagano nude di notte, lupi, montagne di fiori, persone attonite e rapite. Affascinante per l'impegno, ma alla quinta foto ero già annoiato. Freddezza, inconsistenza, ripetitività. Solo pochissime foto hanno una potenza iconica tale da far soffermare lo sguardo. I lunghi titoli di coda delle ultime pagine comunicano solo dispiacere per lo spreco. L'introduzione dello scrittore Rick Moody invece è fresca, inventiva, simpatica e forse merita più del lavoro che presenta.

[Ray Dunsmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeously eerie photos of surreal suburban unease. Like frames taken from fever nightmares, full of unconscious, illogical desire and cryptic impulse. The images are just nonsensical enough to seem dreamlike, but with enough of a foot in reality to give it a rather sinister air of consequence. Communities build massive mounds of flowers and household items - it's entirely unclear why, but the desire is obviously powerful and unquestioning. Butterflies swarm from oddly-lit alcoves, beautiful creatures given an unsettling presence by the sheer emotional tension and discomfort evident in Crewdson's staging. Excellent stuff that's going to be lodged in my subconscious for a long time.

[Elaine Meszaros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crewdson's collection of photos are eerie, surreal and otherworldly. His mundane scenes of suburbia are turned into half-remembered nightmares. A bright stream of light shoots from a gardening shed, a group of people heap flowers into a mound, a woman floats in her half submerged living room. Creepy and eye-catching. More amazing is the amount of work spent creating these tableaus which often take up an entire city block.

[Davy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not really my speed. This isn't photography that speaks to me. I look at it the way I look at stills from a movie. Like they're little parts of something else, something larger and more significant, and not in the medium that was originally intended. This style of photography is too contrived for me, and yet not contrived enough to be something else entirely.

[Dereck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gregory Crewdson is one of my favorite photographers because the stuff he does is actually a set up and not a photo manipulation. It's amazing because you wonder how he does it all.

[Alissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Photo Book. Some of the most expensive photos you'll ever see. Crewdson is known for building elaborately lit movie sets for his photos.

[Charli · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite photography book on the planet. GOD this guy had to be on drugs! I'm so jealous I didn't come up with these photographs.

[Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like stills from an unmade Lynch film. Suburban surreal shot in the half-light.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crewdson always amazes me with his work. Fantastic stuff.

[Jenna Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! The lighting in this book is incredible! Crewdson never disappoints.

[Elin the Menace · Rating 5 out of 5]

The lighting! Twilight is a photo book where both natural and artificial light are used. It makes the images both real and created. The staged stills are emotional, but also move us with their silence. The color palette is wow

[Simms Wright · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are the quintessential Crewdson photographs. A photographer with cinematography workflows and painterly sensibilities. Unrivaled.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stumbled upon this book in the library when looking for something else. I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Somehow Crewdson has managed do things with light--in the "real world"--that I thought could only be done fictionally by Edward Hopper. These photos are absolutely stunning and downright mesmerizing. Brilliant stuff.

[Sunil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Project without motive -you figure it out. It's a shame Moody's introduction sucks; his introduction for The Collected Stories irritated me as well. Oh well.

[Beth Barnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really weird photos staged and created as if for theater or film.

[Kelsey Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crewdson creates the most amazing stories with his staged images. Each moment is planned. I love the look of his work. So surreal.