Gregory Crewdson is the kind of guy that shuts streets down and does all kinds of wacky stuff, all in search of the perfect ‘moment of grace’. To say that Crewdson makes staged photography is a clear understatement. This man puts everything but the kitchen sink into the images he creates: set designers, actors, lighting technicians, makeup artists and full production crews.

photo www.paranaiv.no

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962. In 1985 he received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase and an MFA in photography from Yale in 1988, where he is currently Director of Graduate Studies in Photography. In his teens, he played in the band The Speedies, whose first single, “Let Me Take Your Foto”, anticipated his future career. Above all, Crewdson can be described as a photographer in the literal sense of someone who makes pictures with light, which clearly plays the leading role in his visual world. His photographs have the look of high-definition stills from Hollywood movies, being at the same time separated from any context or presumed chain of events.

photo paulfoxphotography.blogspot.com

photo photofunatndmoa.blogspot.com

Crewdson’s large-scale photographs explore the surreal dark side of small-town American life. But why does an artist like Crewdson, who did not grow up in stereotypical suburbs but in New York, have the desire to “create” this world? Crewdson argues that his lack of experience with Middle America “provides [his work] with a sense of alien perspective,” and it is precisely this sensation of alienation that makes his photographs interesting.

photo zindoygafuri.blogspot.com

He has developed an early obsession with secrets, ever since as a small boy he would try to eavesdrop on his father’s conversations with his patients: a psychoanalyst who saw patients in the family basement. Possibly, now, his son, through art, is able to imagine what those secrets might have been.

The photographs he constructs are always shoot at twilight, when, with the help of lighting set ups the mundane is transformed into the mysterious, turning the whole setting into an individual character. “I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its transformative quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and otherworldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is that sense of in-between-ness that interests me.” (Gregory Crewdson)

photo theamericanreader.com

Crewdson is not interested in documenting; rather he strives to create a world that merely feels real and only exists in a photograph. Many of his photos evoke Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus, and film directors like David Lynch and Alfred Hitchcock (he admits to being profoundly influenced by David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet”).

Gregory Crewdson has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, he has published several books of his photographs, has received numerous awards and a large number of works by the artist have been sold at auctions. The end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 didn’t look bad either for Mr. Crewdson. 2012 ended with the launch of his Brief Encounters movie in October, a documentary filmed over a 10 year span, with unprecedented access to the moment of creation of his images.

photo cincyworldcinema.org

It also reveals the life-story behind the work, childhood fears and ideals, adult anxieties and desires, the influences of pop-culture all combine to motivate his work. In a Lonely Place, an exhibition which was on show from 16 March to 25 May 2013 at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and which featured three series, Fireflies, Beneath the Roses, and Sanctuary. And finally, American Darkness, an exhibition that lasted until a couple of days ago at the Danziger Gallery in New York, and which was a two person show: O. Winston Link and Gregory Crewdson. O. Winston Link (1915 – 2001) was a commercial photographer who in the mid 1950s devoted five years of his life to recording the last days of steam on the Norfolk and Western railway line.  He used to photograph at night (when the steam appeared white against the black sky) and enlisting both train personnel and locals as supporting cast, in a very carefully staged scenario.

photo filmsnotdead.com

There’s a lot more to say about Gregory Crewdson, and no one can tell the story better then the artist himself:

by Alexandra Mateescu

Alexandra Mateescu is a photo-video junkie who left her imaginary super successful forensics career in favor of the University of Arts. She frequently gets mistaken with a 16 year old high school girl so you’ll never catch her without her ID, she has a strong passion for the 80’s, and her kind of art must be funny and a little bit ironic.

http://www.behance.net/alexandra_mateescu