Gregory Crewdson

Photography Analysis

“It’s always [my] interest in trying to tell a story through light and color.

That’s essentially what I’m attempting to do.”

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1962. In 1985, he received a BA from the State University of New York-Purchase College, where he studied photography with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. He graduated with an MFA in photography from Yale University in 1988.

Crewdson is known for his elaborately, staged large photographs, like cinematic productions with lighting, actors and props, shot at twilight in declining towns and neighborhoods of New England, that capture a sense of anxiety, mystery and essentially representing films captured in a photography. In these pointedly theatrical yet intensely real panoramic images, Crewdson explores the recesses of the American psyche and the disturbing dramas at play within quotidian environments.

In Beneath the Roses, anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios.

In this image a lone and pregnant woman stands on a wet street corner just before dawn: she is a small but a portentous still point in a world of trajectories. One car running towards us. The mountain in the background gives a glimpse of the surrounding natural landscape.

If we look at the vanishing point we can conclude that camera level was high about 3m. That perspective creates a long road full of details.

End of perspective principle is applied, with (artificially created) fog at that end, masking an interest point and which focus the attention on the middle ground and the foreground.

As usual, Crewdson use the principle of the frame within a frame. Besides the buildings, the windows, here we can notice in this image is the principle of the frame within a frame applied to empty spaces.

The image is captured around twilight hour to get a nice mix of natural and artificial lights and this crate a simple chromatic palette with two complementary colors to better contribute to overall composition and chromatic harmony.

Bibliography:

Seizing the Light, A Social & Aesthetic History of Photography, Robert Hirsch, Third edition published 2017 by Routledge;

Gregory Crewdson – Brief Encounters, documentary film by Ben Shapiro, 2012, http://www.gregorycrewdsonmovie.com/

Gregory Crewdson: Silence in a Small Town, Rosalind Duguid,

https://elephant.art/silence-in-a-small-town/

In Focus: Gregory Crewdson, Rosie Torres,

https://independent-photo.com/news/gregory-crewdson/

Thoughts on Gregory Crewdson…, Grant Scott,

https://unitednationsofphotography.com/2021/02/21/thoughts-on-gregory-crewdson/