As a child, American photographer Gregory Crewdson tried to eavesdrop on conversations between his father, a psychoanalyst, and his patients. "I remember wanting to peer in on something forbidden," he said.
His camera lens has afforded him the opportunity to do just that. He believes this early preoccupation with the taboo is still one of the central themes of his work, which provides a surreal glimpse into suburban America. He employs theatrical lighting and elaborate set production to capture a single, often melancholy, moment in time.
While some of his early work, such as his Natural Wonder series (1992-1997), were shots of dioramas he created in his studio, his more recent work is set either on location in small towns or on sound stages.
He showed photographs he took one summer during graduate school at Yale. Using a small town in New England as his backdrop, he "tried to tell a story in light and color." The people in his portraits were all strangers, but the act of entering their homes represents a certain intimacy between photographer and subject. At the same time, Crewdson's subjects are props in his own narrative and their homes become, as he described it, "a site to project my own fictions."
One image was shot from inside a house overlooking a baseball field illuminated with flood lights at night. Crewdson described using a window "as a frame for the interior and exterior" separating "what is familiar and known and what is forbidden and unknown," returning again to the themes from his childhood.
Similar motifs are present in all of his images. However, while the pictures he took during graduate school were done in people's own homes, Crewdson's staging became increasingly more elaborate as he grew as a photographer.
From convincing a woman to plant a garden in her living room to enlisting the local fire department to burn down a house, his work now always involves large crews and, very often, entire towns. He has sodded a street with grass, created a fake snowstorm and posed the local dog catcher with a loaf of Wonderbread and a stuffed brown bear.
His lecture provided an interesting glimpse into the production of his images. When he is shooting on location, he spends months driving around trying to find the right setting. "The place has to feel absolutely ordinary but also have a promise of beauty," he said.
But even though his productions in some ways very much resemble a movie set, Crewdson has no plans to dabble in other mediums. "I think exclusively in terms of single images," he said.
He also points out that despite the enormous efforts that go into capturing the single image he's after, much of the real work happens in post-production. As he puts it, "photography is a process of editing."
Throughout his lecture, Crewdson described what he does as "making pictures" or "making photographs," rather than the more commonly used "taking pictures." (A google search returned 400,000 hits for "make a picture" and 2.7 million for "take a picture). And as he is in control of every last detail frozen in that single moment, "making" may very well be the most accurate description of what he does. Crewdson said the distinction was not conscious:
"I most likely work very differently than other photographers who capture moments in real time. But in the end, no matter how you make a photograph, whether you are a street photographer, working with still life, or working how I do, the problems are always the same. It's how to make a photograph that reflects your vision of the world and how you make a photograph that means something."
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