Untitled (woman stain)
2001
Edition of 10
Digital C-print
48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm)
Untitled (penitent girl)
2001-2002
Edition of 10
Digital C-print
48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm)
Untitled (Dylan on the floor)
2001-2002
Digital C-print
48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm)
Untitled
2001
Digital C-print
48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm)
“I think I always have been drawn to photography because I want to construct a perfect world. I want to try to create this moment that is separate from the chaos of my life, and to do that I think I create enormous disorder. And I like that craziness because I think that it creates almost a sort of neurotic energy on the set, and through that there is a moment of transportation. And in all my pictures what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world. Despite my compulsion to create this still world, it always meets up against the impossibility of doing so. So, I like the collision between this need for order and perfection and how it collides with a sense of the impossible. I like where possibility and impossibly meet.”
Gregory Crewdson
I was introduced to Gregory Crewdson's work my freshman year of college. His name completely slipped my mind for three years, yet an image of a woman in a kitchen full of flowers remained. I have been trying to somehow locate this photograph for the past year and had no luck. His name has been resonating in my head for the past two weeks and my brain freeze has finally ended! I was thrilled to have finally found the owner of this photograph. I am incredibly drawn to Crewdson's elaborate and very enticing scenes. In my mind, the best photography is made when the producer can create something that did not previously exist, and never will again. I love to think of photography in a way that is not simply just recording or reproducing, it is a creation, a vision that shows individuality in the hand of the artist. Crewdson states, "I like the collision between this need for order and perfection and how it collides with a sense of the impossible. I like where possibility and impossibly meet." Crewdson creates this "meeting point" in his series "Twilight" and also in "Beneath the Roses." This body of work allows me to drift off into another world, one that doesn't necessarily make sense or make you feel comfortable by looking at it, yet it's odd, "other", incredibly beautiful, and mysterious enough for me to want more. Not only do I want to see more, I want to know more. Crewdson's ability to produce this feeling by having a vision and manipulating light to the point that the viewer has to question how it was made and what is actually going on in the photograph is a quality that I want to intertwine with my work this semester. I enjoy the possibility of a viewer being able to think what they want, to believe and to question what their head is telling them is going on. Creating work that omits certain details allows the viewer to fill those voids in with their own imagination, and start a conversation of connection within themselves.
BIOGRAPHY
“Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson's method is equally filmic, building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent. When he was ten, Crewdson's father, a psychoanalyst, took him to see a Diane Arbus exhibition at MoMA, an early aesthetic experience that informed his decision to become a photographer. Crewdson's photographs are like incomplete sentences, with little reference to prior events or what may follow. The artist has referred the 'limitations of a photograph in terms of narrative capacity to have an image that is frozen in time, (where) there's no before or after' and has turned that restriction into a unique strength.
-John Berggruen Gallery
http://www.berggruen.com/#/artists/gregory-crewdson/
QUOTES
“Mr. Crewdson's images compress the melodrama of an entire movie, or soap-opera season, into a single, elaborately constructed scene… Some details suggest horror movie kitsch, like the filthy pink telephone in a hotel room where an older woman stands naked in the bathroom. The blood dripping down her thigh pushes the narrative toward overload: is she sick or not as menopausal as she thought? Has she checked into a room where something horrible has happened and might happen again or was the maid in a rush? With so much going on, the sets themselves become the main events, and the characters often assume a proplike woodenness. The woman who stares fixedly at a roast beef so rare it may have driven her husband from the dinner table might almost be a store mannequin… Mr. Crewdson's outdoor images are less overwrought and more mysterious. The play of natural and artificial light (learned from the images of O. Winston Link) gives him more to work with, and the open space helps.”
Smith, Roberta. "Art in Review; Gregory Crewdson." The New York Times 3 June
2005: The New York Times. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
“It is almost impossible not to invent a story from Crewdson's scenes. What connects them is atmosphere: main streets emptied of people, puddles on the road, damp and spooky woods, overgrown railroad tracks, anonymous suburbia, people in dimly lit rooms where things are going on that we shouldn't be seeing…… Maybe it doesn't mean anything much, but you can't help speculating.”
Searle, Adrian. "Too Much Information." The Guardian 15 Apr. 2005: n. pag.
The Guardian. Web. 5 Sept. 2010.
INTERVIEWS
GALLERIES
White Cube
Luhring Augustine
ARTIST WEBSITE
Oddly enough, Gregory Crewdson does not seem to have his own webpage, yet has various information on numerous sites. I would say that the first link is the closest to his homepage, as his entire production team is noted on the website. There is a “crewdsonstudios.com” with absolutely no information on the site, yet there is plenty of vary helpful information on the following websites:
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