Electronic Assignment Cover sheet
Student: 10061004
Course Title: Film Studies
Lecturer Name: Dragana Jurisic
Module/Subject Title: Understanding
the Image
Assignment Title: CA Part 1
No. of Words: 1417
Secrets
Beneath the Surface: Gregory Crewdson.
Gregory Crewdson is a one of the leading figures in American
photography. He is most noted for his elaborately staged, haunting surrealist
photographs of suburban America. He has a very cinematic style to his work,
which involves the use of actors to stage shots that are thought right through
to the tinniest detail. He also has an ornamented use of lighting and other
cinematic equipment, such as a fog machine. His attention to detail and his
perseverance to create a perfect moment with layers upon layers of
understanding and mystery, terror and awe, make him one of the most inspiring
and incredible modern artists of our time.
Gregory was born in Brooklyn, New York on September
26th 1962. From as young as ten he had an interest in photography
after his father brought him to see the Diane Arbus retrospective at the museum
of modern art in New York. This was the first time he felt a real understanding
of the psychological power a photograph can have. Gregory says his father had a
“Profound influence on his development”. His father was a psychoanalyst who had
his offices in the basement of Gregory’s childhood home. Although he admits he
didn’t have a true understanding of what was going on in the basement, Gregory
would put regularly put his ear to the floorboards above his father’s office
and listen to his sessions with his patients. How he was drawn to the mystery
and secret of the forbidden room was recalled later in life by Gregory as a
“potent metaphor for what I do as a photographer, trying to project a fantasy
of something that’s forbidden, or secret, or beneath the surface of things”.
During his teenage years he was a member of a punk
rock band that called themselves The
Speedies. They were a short-lived hit in New York where they regularly sold
out various venues. Their one underground hit song “Let me take your foto” was,
as we know now, near prophetic to what Crewdson’s future career would be. In
2005, Hewlett Packard would use the song in an advertisement campaign that
promoted their digital cameras.
After his time in the band, Gregory took a
photography class because of his girlfriend at the times interest in it and
ended up falling in love with the medium. Soon after he watched director David
Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which only
furthered his interest in the secrets that lie beneath the surface of domestic
life and also would have an influence on his cinematic shooting style.
In the early 80’s he studied photography at State
University of New York at Purchase. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from
this college in 1985. He would go on to study photography at Yale University
where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1988. In 1993 he began
teaching at Yale University and is now a professor at the Yale school of art.
The White Cube gallery represent him in London and Gagosian gallery represent
him worldwide.
During the 90’s, Crewdson had a number of projects
he undertook. These included Natural
Wonder (1992-97) and Hover
(1995-96), but it was not until 1998 when he began work on his Twilight series that he began to become
a truly progressive artistic photographer. The series was completed in 2002 and
comprised of forty wonderfully staged photographs of beautifully surreal
settings based in suburban America. Crewdson is known to prefer to shot his
photos during the twilight hour of the day where the sun has just set, hence
the name of the series, “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.” he explains.
The shots create a paper thin line between arbitrary
domestic life and one of fantasy and imagination and explore the relationship
between them in an amazingly intelligent way through lighting, colour and mood.
He has a great talent of finding the marvellous in the ordinary and the banal,
the photo of the young boy looking up from beneath a bridge is a good example
of this.
Most of the images in the series are quite dark and
feel very eerie and alienated. He depicts scenes of anxiety and dislocation
where the subject of the photo is often caught in the moment or preoccupied,
such as the photo in which a man climbs a beanstalk covered in colourful
lights.
His pictures also contain unresolved narratives that
speak of American family life, as can be seen in his shot of the teenage girl
standing on a lawn in a neighbourhood with her mother before her looking on
with a disappointed stare.
One of the most impactful and thought-provoking
images in the series is of a young woman floating calmly in a living room that
has been flooded to knee height. This photo is a modern re-working of the
painting of Ophelia from the play Hamlet
by William Shakespeare, in which she appears to drown herself accidentally
because of her “madness” but most readers would believe it to be suicide. This
is a metaphor for what things appear to be and what they truly are. The images
of this series depict a frighteningly dark underbelly that is constantly
lurking under the surface of modern suburbia.
In 2006, Gregory Crewdson opened an exhibition for
what most of his fans believe to be his greatest work, Beneath the Roses. In this series, desolate streets and banal
interior rooms which are set in towns where capitalism is failing, provide a
stage for strange yet seemingly normal scenarios. There is deep psychological
meaning behind every photo and every photo explores anxiety, dreams and fears. The
subjects in his photos all feel connected, that they are struggling quietly in
the life of a modern American. Writer Russell Banks describes theses photos as
“a humanistic embrace that has political implications”. Though Gregory would
rather it be submerged in the content than politically driven. The series is
considered Crewdson’s most elaborate to date.
Crewdson’s photos in this series are particularly
atmospherically and mostly contain somber, solitary figures. One picture, set
in a musty, badly kept room, or possible trailer, an old couple are contained.
The man is in centre frame sat in a ragged chair in front of a television, the
grey-blue light flushed across his face. The woman is in the kitchen behind him
in the corner with her back turned. These to figures are representive of
dislocation in middle class America. The contempt on the man’s face adds a grim
atmosphere and a sense of hopelessness. This is an iconic example of Crewdson’s
work, seemingly banal on the surface but with secrets of American anxiety
underneath.
A number of shots from the series project a form of
psychological discomfort and emotional distance. His photograph shot on a sound
stage where a mother can be seen through the window of a motel room sitting on
the edge of a bed looking down at a new born in the centre of the bed. There is
a feeling of restraint, of distance between mother and child. There is also a
deep sense of loneliness and a mystery of the events leading up to the strange
moment. With this, Crewdson can send one’s imagination wild.
The whole series feels nearly dystopian at times and
intensely real. It’s no wonder this is considered the peak of his career,
anyone in the world could get lost in these images for hours.
The vast range of Crewdson’s influence for his work
make him very relatable to any person. These influences do include older
photographers such as Diane Arbus and Walker Evans, but also a lot of
filmmakers. These directors include David Lynch, particularly his film Blue
Velvet. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psyco is also a film Crewdson says influenced him
greatly. This connection with other mediums has moulded him into a very popular
contemporary artist. His surreal set ups and his unique, cool style, along with
the quality of his production, which costs around the same as an independent
film, makes the aesthetics of his photos very appealing to the masses.
His influence on both his students at Yale and
prospective independent photographers will hopefully carry his legacy and he
will be remembered as a major contributor to the history of photography.
References:
Gregory
Crewdson: Brief Encounters.
(Documentary).
Director: Ben Shapiro. Distributed by Zeitgeist
Films.
