Gregory Crewdson

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Gregory Crewdson, July 2007

Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962 in Brooklyn ) is an American photographer .

Life

Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, the son of a psychoanalyst . He attended John Dewey High School and the State University of New York at Purchase College . Here he began to be interested in art and photography and experimented with artistic photography for the first time . In 1988 he graduated from Yale University School of Art with an MFA in Photography.

During his youth, Crewdson was a member of a punk rock group from New York called The Speedies , which lasted mostly through the 1970s. Her song Let Me Take Your Foto from 1979 is considered one of his impulses for photography.

Crewdson's work also inspired his photographs. His practice was located in part of the parents' house, so Crewdson noticed the heavy atmosphere and parts of the conversations with the patients. He found them eerie and mysterious, he could not understand them, but that made them appear even more mysterious. Crewdson himself describes these experiences as a formative experience of his childhood and to this day they have an influence on the aspects of psychology in his art.

Crewdson is represented worldwide by the Gagosian Gallery in New York and the White Cube Gallery in London.

Since 1993 he has been teaching at Yale University alongside various other universities .

So far, Crewdson's work has only consisted of photographs and the associated books. He does not give any clear information on whether film work is conceivable in the future.

Working method and style

In his works, Crewdson deals with the mixture of reality and dream, with the strange in everyday life. He often combines elements of nature with urban aspects, whereby his earlier works mainly take place in nature itself, while later nature invades people's living space as a mysterious element.

As this living space he primarily chooses the urban suburbs of the USA, where fears, longings and desires are hidden. There he creates scenes that create fear, similar to David Lynch in his film Blue Velvet , which Crewdson calls the inspiration for his work. Lynch shows a typical front garden with people who seem everyday, until the feeling of normality is broken by events or modes of representation that do not fit into the picture. The eerie atmosphere can often not be explained clearly; with Crewdson it consists primarily of the suppressed feelings and tensions between people, of the unspoken beneath the surface. It can be felt rather than seen.

Crewdson developed a very personal imagery : The people portrayed themselves often seem lost in their actually native environment. Sometimes, as if under duress, they pursue activities that have been interrupted by the strange or seem pointless and often they are only in a trance in the middle of the surreal situation.

The atmosphere and the depicted scenes are partly similar to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Crewdson's role model is about scenes in which the life of a suburban family is broken up by the mysterious activities of aliens. Although actual references to extraterrestrials are rare at Crewdson, the mood, locations, light, nature of the events and people are sometimes very similar.

Other artists Crewdson names as influences on his work are the painter Edward Hopper and the photographer Diane Arbus .

Crewdson himself says that his art is not meant to be socially critical, but only refers to the personal, psychological aspects of people.

Light also plays an important role in Crewdson's productions. He designs a veritable light choreography that underlines the uncanny aspect of the works in its various parts. The light often appears diffuse and no sensible light source can be identified. Inconsistencies arise with the recognizable light sources, the appearance of which does not match the lighting of the scene; natural and artificial light seem to exist side by side.

One of his influences on this aspect was the director Alfred Hitchcock , who symbolically uses light in his films such as Vertigo and thus changes the mood of the scene. Emotions and connections are underlined or changed by the intensity or color.

The Crewdsons photography series usually only consist of a few photographs, as the individual staging effort is extraordinarily high. Especially in the later works, he works in large sets with a cinematic crew of experts and even some well-known actors. Recognizing these actors, according to Crewdson, has an interesting effect on the viewer in addition to better expression. It usually only takes place after looking at the picture for a long time and then gives the situation something new, a change made by the person you think you know outside of the depicted scene. What you see and what you remember are inseparably mixed up in the world created by Crewdson.

Despite the elaborate staging, Crewdson describes his work process as intuitive and thus also the development by the viewer.

The appearance of the photographs is also often described as if it were a snapshot from a Hollywood movie. These are mostly large formats, which changes the recording process. If you look at it for a long time, more and more parts are perceived that influence the statement without, however, always being clearly perceptible. Crewdson works many details into his staging that give the impression that there is an event behind the scene and that it was not photographed for the sake of aesthetics.

These details are also important for the statement of the photographs. For the viewer, the most diverse elements can provide an overall picture, but it is hardly possible to clearly grasp what is happening. A good example of this is the work Ophelia from the Twilight series . In the picture, an apparently dead woman lies in her flooded house. The scene doesn't seem to make much sense at first, but as you look at it for a longer time, more and more references to the events appear. Scattered everyday objects, burning lights and objects that seem to come from outside, like some flowers, do not take the atmosphere out of the picture, but intensify the diffuse fear. Everything seems like there has to be a solution, but instead the scene remains surreal. The statement in Crewdson's works therefore always remains open. He creates a kind of dream world in which his truths are presented, but which can never be clearly grasped, and searches for a meaning himself. The predominance of feelings within the works results from the desired instinctive apprehension. The effect is generated more by the atmosphere than by clear statements about the intention.

Works

  • Early Works (1986–1988)
  • Natural Wonder (1992-1997)
  • Fireflies (1996)
  • Hover (1996-1997)
  • Twilight (1998-2002)
  • Dream House (2002)
  • Beneath the Roses (2003-2008)
  • Sanctuary (2009-2010)
  • Cathedral of the Pines (2016)

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 2005: Hanover, Art Association
  • 2006: Krefeld, Lange House, Esters House
  • 2006: Winterthur Photo Museum
  • 2006: Linz, Landesgalerie
  • 2007: Gothenburg, Art Museum, Hasselblad Center
  • 2007: FOTO.KUNST , Essl Museum - Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg / Vienna
  • 2010: Eerie Realities - Duane Hanson and Gregory Crewdson , Baden-Baden, Museum Frieder Burda
  • 2010: CORSO. Works from the Essl Collection in Dialogue , Essl Museum - Contemporary Art, Klosterneuburg / Vienna
  • 2011: In a Lonely Place , C / O Berlin
  • 2012: Melbourne, Center for Contemporary Photography
  • 2013: Brisbane, Institute of Modern Art
  • 2016: New York, Gagosian Gallery NY
  • 2017: London, The Photographers' Gallery

Awards

  • 2009: German photo book award for Beneath the Roses. Works 2003 - 2007
  • 2004: Skowhegan Medal for Photography
  • 1992: National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship
  • 1991: Aaron Siskind Fellowship

Literature (selection)

  • Rick Moody (Ed.): Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Harry N. Abrams, New York 2002, ISBN 0-8109-1003-9 ; included Untitled (Ophelia) .
  • Stephan Berg (Ed.): Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005 , 2005, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, ISBN 3-7757-1622-X
  • Gregory Crewdson: Beneath the Roses. Works 2003–2007 , 2008, Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern.
  • Hatje Cantz:, 2011, Ostfildern, ISBN 978-3-7757-3136-2 .
  • Gregory Crewdson, Alexander Nemerov: Cathedral of the Pines, 2016, Aperture, ISBN 978-1597113502
  • Klaus Behringer:. In: State Institute for School Development Stuttgart for the Promotion of Art Education (Hrsg.): Masterpieces of Art. Volume 54.

Web links

Commons : Gregory Crewdson  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Yale University School of Art: Gregory Crewdson. Retrieved December 3, 2017 .
  2. a b c d e f Dieter Bechtloff: Just because it never happened doesn't mean it isn't real, A conversation with Magdalena Kröner . In: Dieter Bechtloff (Ed.): Kunstforum International . tape 169 , 2004, pp. 174 .
  3. ^ Yale University School of Art: Gregory Crewdson. Retrieved December 3, 2017 .
  4. a b c d Stephan Berg: Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005 . S. 150-157 .
  5. a b c Photographer Crewdson: The dark unconscious of the USA. In: Spiegel Online. February 27, 2014, accessed December 3, 2017 .
  6. a b c d e Klaus Behringer: Untitled (Ophelia), from the Twilight Series 1998-2002 . In: State Institute for School Development Stuttgart for the Promotion of Art Education (Hrsg.): Masterpieces of Art . tape 54 .
  7. ^ Hatje Cantz Publisher: Gregory Crewdson | Art dictionary | Hatje Cantz Publishing House. Retrieved December 3, 2017 .
  8. Gregory Crewdson - artist, news & exhibitions - photography-now.com. Retrieved December 3, 2017 .
  9. ^ Gregory Crewdson at Gagosian. Retrieved December 3, 2017 .