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GREGORY CREWDSON |
Gregory Crewdson is a leading practitioner in the use of constructed models and staged events in photographic art, which blurs the distinction between reality and fiction. Focusing frequently on the American suburban landscape, his carefully composed and dramatically lit photographs present strangely disquieting views of everyday life that one critic has described as being like a “demented Norman Rockwell.” Crewdson’s influences include his father who was a psychoanalyst, the classic cinematic devices used in science fiction/horror films, the straightforward realities of documentary photography, and the work of such contemporary photographers as Diane Arbus, William Eggleston, and Cindy Sherman. Crewdson describes himself as an American realist and has said: “I’ve always been interested in the uncanny, in looking into ordinary situations and finding something fantastical or mysterious. I’ve always been interested in domesticity; I’ve always been interested in photographic beauty; and I’ve always been interested in a kind of realism.”
This photograph is from Twilight, a series of forty images Crewdson and his production team made in and around Lee, Massachusetts between 1998 and 2002. The series was shot at dusk, a time when the ambient light of nature merges with the artificial light of humans. Capitalizing on the unique qualities of twilight and the banalities of a suburban environment, the images in the series are subtly unsettling and exude an eerie sense of stillness. This example was shot on a constructed stage where a boy in his underwear is seen reaching into a bathroom drain. The dark, empty space visible below the floor and the dramatic light streaming in the window turn what at first appears to be a mundane domestic scene into an unexplainable moment in an unknown narrative. Crewdson makes rather then takes his photographs, exposing the dreams, anxieties, fears, and desires that underlie everyday life.
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects