Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005

by Gregory Crewdson (Photographer)

Gregory Crewdson's photographic series capture a particularly American state of normalcy--in dissolution. The viewer, at first seduced by what appears to be an idyllic scene, soon discovers subtle off-kilter elements more akin to Film Noir than an NBC comedy. In a work from his Twilight series, yellow school buses are parked outside white wooden houses, and students stand and lounge around in seeming passivity. Something is happening--what, we don't know. The vision is familiar yet unfamiliar, seemingly benign yet threatening. Crewdson goes to great lengths in dramatizing his disturbing suburban scenes, employing elaborate lighting, cranes, props, and extras, espousing a level of behind-the-scenes preparation more akin to the making of a Hollywood movie than the making of a still image. Here perhaps is one place to locate the eerie unreality and narrativity of his pictures, the creepy attention to detail so out of place, come to think of it, in the oh-so-ordinary settings he evokes. Middle-class reality meets the other side of the normal here--by way of Sigmund Freud.

Genres: Photography, Art, Art and Photography

248 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2005

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

[Tempest · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gregory Crewdson is a photographer who quotes ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ to be one of his most major aesthetic influences. His large-scale photographs, made with the same budget and production of a movie, are eerie, uncomfortable, and occasionally hauntingly beautiful. His figures stare at the unseen, interact with the supernatural. The lighting is perfect. But what makes you feel so incredibly uneasy isn’t necessarily the vacant stare or illogical poses. It’s the fact that Crewdson, shooting with a large-format camera, takes three shots of each scene. One of the foreground, one of the middle-ground, and one of the background. He pieces these together in photoshop, seamlessly. What results is an image completely in sharp focus. You don’t know what it is, you can’t put your finger on why these images make you feel uncomfortable. But your eye recognizes something that your brain can’t comprehend because it’s not the norm. The disconnect between the two causes a tension that draws the audience in, makes them uncomfortable, but in a lasting and intriguing manner.

[Jin-Ah Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

My only regret...never taking a class taught by Gregory Crewdson...now I'd have to travel to Yale.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sort of a cross between DiCorcia and the New Topographics folks; eerie set-designed suburbia on large-format film, 100% impressive.

Also I'm happy that people were so cooperative with his elaborate setups, lol:

After looking around a while, I finally found a house that would be perfect for what I had in mind. I knocked on the door and explained what I wanted to do. I needed to pour a perfect circle of fresh soil in the center of their yard, close their street, and park a giant boom lift in front of their house to support me and the 8 x 10 camera eighty feet above the scene. The woman thought about it a moment before replying, 'Do what you have to do.'

[Edward Kidder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love this photographer-- if Edward Hopper and David Lynch had a love child who became a still photographer, he might do work like Gregory Crewdson. The only short coming with this book is that the original photographs are often very very large, so much of the detail is lost unless you study the book with a magnifying glass.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

"What emerges are poignant images of a society confronting the abysmal depths of its own damaged psyche, a quasi-hypnotized society that is just as alienated from itself as it is from the fragile reality through which it continues to walk."