In his images, American photographer Gregory Crewdson draws out the American vernacular and anxieties of suburbia. Working with large crews and built sets, the artist constructs chilling scenes akin to movie stills that bridge truth and fiction, emphasising isolation and loneliness.
Read MoreGregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1985, he received his BA from Purchase College, State University of New York. He later received his MFA in Photography from Yale University in 1988, where he now sits as the director of the graduate photography studies programme.
Crewdson's first experience with photography was in 1972, when his father took him to a Diane Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. While he had not yet decided to pursue photography, this exhibition was pivotal to Crewdson. He has previously remarked that it was the first time he discovered the power of photographs. Crewdson only began taking photos during his undergraduate studies through the mentorship of American artist Laurie Simmons.
The artist's early work was inspired by suburban life and diorama displays in natural history museums. In his 'Natural Wonder' (1992—1997) series, he built small backdrops and models where he arranged insects and animals as his subjects. Constructed and set on the fringes of suburbia, these works have an eerie, cultish, and even grotesque tone. In one untitled photo from the series, several birds stand watch over eggs arranged in a circle. In another, mice surround a mutilated human leg, implying that they had captured and chewed through this figure.
Crewdson's photographic process is one akin to cinematography and movie sets, yet condensed into a single frame. His ambiguous and cinematic scenes often blur the lines between reality and fiction. Crewdson's photographs provide the viewer with hyperrealistic narratives, yet in reality are completely staged and constructed.
Often working with a crew of around 30 people, Crewdson's photographs are carefully planned with the help of lighting directors, storyboard artists, technicians, location scouts, and actors. The process of making his 'Beneath the Roses' (2003—2008) series involved closing off streets of small towns in Vermont and Massachusetts, as well as a collaboration with art directors to construct elaborate settings in sound stages.
Crewdson uses a Phase One camera and has previously operated large-format film cameras to capture intense detail for his large-scale prints. In 2012, Ben Shapiro directed, produced, and shot Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, a documentary about the artist's process and practice over the span of ten years.
Much of Crewdson's photographs are melancholic depictions of isolation set in homes and small towns. His work is informed by the location that he sets his scenes in. Having utilised dark and subdued colour palettes, his photographs incite similar feelings to looking at photographs by William Eggleston, paintings of Edward Hopper, or the films of David Lynch. Crewdson's chilling 'Twilight' (1998—2002) series includes an image of a woman floating in a flooded home, scenes from a bathroom, and figures standing eerily beneath a streetlamp.
A slight departure from his architecturally heavy sets, Crewdson's 'Cathedral of the Pines' (2013—2014) series instead features the surrounding forests of rural towns. Portraying nude figures on the back of a pickup truck, couples conversing in the snow, and downcast women in their homes, the artist continues to play with the tensions of solitude and belonging and the unknown struggles that his subjects experience.
In a 2016 interview with SCI-Arc, Crewdson discusses the lonely qualities and voyeuristic impulse of photography as a means to uncover secret stories. He has moreover talked about the psychological nature of photography in a 2014 interview with American Photo, saying that 'I've always been interested in ... trying to explain my own fear, and anxiety, and desire in photographs. The pictures are my means of trying to find meaning in the world.'
Gregory Crewdson has held solo exhibitions at The San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; White Cube, London; and Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. His work has been collected by major institutions such as The Guggenheim Museum, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Arianna Mercado | Ocula | 2021
