Gregory Crewdson
If you could freeze an instant in the inner life of a neighborhood as a diorama, how would you go about doing it? The answer might well look much like the photographs of Gregory Crewdson. Born in 1962 in Brooklyn, Crewdson came to early fame as guitarist for power pop group The Speedies, best known for their song "Let Me Take Your Photo." Changing artistic directions, he obtained his MFA from Yale University's School of Art in 1988. He quickly became famous in the art world for his elaborate, large scale staged photographic tableaux. His photographs take the everyday life events of suburbia, and merge them with disquieting, unexpected elements: a woman sits in a car at a deserted intersection - the driver's door is open, and no driver is to be seen; a middle-class family sits down to dinner, but looks up as the naked mater familias walks in the door, tracking garden detritus behind her. His 2003 collection of photographs expresses in its title both an aesthetic as well as a conceptual approach: Twilight. The photographs are carefully and consciously staged, and involve a crew in their creation that is comparable to what might be involved in making a small film. The resulting 8X10 shots are in turn composited by Crewdson to create the final, somewhat hyperreal result. Much like Edward Hopper, who Crewdson cites as a strong influence upon his work, Gregory Crewdson explores the psychology of his subjects and their world through work that is nothing if not cinematic in nature.
