A brief summary... Gregory Crewdson’s carefully staged photographs concentrate on a tension between domesticity and nature. In his most recent series photographed in Massachusetts, the artist employed a large production crew to create eerie special effects reminiscent of horror/sci-fi movies.
For two decades, Gregory Crewdson's cinematic photographs have seemed to capture moments as familiar as if they were from our own memories, if our memories were directed by Hitchcock or Spielberg or David Lynch—and if we were crazy. Frequently his trademark pictures of neighborhoods and townscapes have been composed around a generic all-American car, a modest, boxy, mid-eighties sedan. Usually haphazardly parked and usually with a door open. “It's the kind of car I love,” he says.
The characters in his elaborate constructions act subconsciously, as if under the spell of a foreign entity. Their unusual actions suggest a mysterious narrative involving supernatural contact. Crewdson has acknowledged Steven Spielberg’s film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, as a primary influence. In that movie, an average American man is emotionally and psychically changed after contact with a UFO. Like the character in the film, Crewdson’s subjects perform eccentric, ritual-like acts.
It has been a long time where I have felt the emotional connection with what a photo displays. Diane Arbus is still the tops, but Gregory Crewdson is really pushing the envelope. So my top three now are: Tom Eipert, Diane Arbus, and Gregory Crewdson.
