Beneath the Roses: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

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I Never Thought What You Were Telling Me Was True or a Product of Your Imagination, Galeria Estrany De La Mota, Barcelona, Spain It’s important to remember though that he didn’t always work this way. When starting out he either worked solo or with a tiny team.

Installation photographs the series Sanctuary (2010) from the exhibition Gregory Crewdson: In A Lonely Place at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy, Melbourne 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.” In 2012, he was the subject of the feature documentary film Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. [22] The film series followed the construction of and an explanation by Crewdson of his thought process and vision for pieces of Beneath the Roses. A Thousand Hounds. A Walk with the Dogs Through the History of Photography, UBS PaineWebber Art Gallery, New York, USA

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Gregory Crewdson: Sanctuary, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY. 2010; [57] Gagosian Gallery, Rome, Italy, 2011; [58] TIFF '11 Festival, Toronto, Canada, 2011 [59] La Fábrica Gallery, Madrid, Spain [60] The surreal photographs are dark and disquieting, filled with morose people. While naked bodies and sexuality is incorporated in several pictures, it is all portrayed in a grim manner with no love or affection shown between the participants. The indoor scenes are obviously choreographed, with great attention to the details. This artificiality made me ponder the time and money poured into creating each specific look, from finding the cars and decor of the era, to employing the actors and actresses that were never shown in a flattering light.

Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he attended Brooklyn Friends School, and then John Dewey High School. Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is known for his staged and surreal color images of American suburbia. Crewdson’s emblematic series Twilight (1998–2002) ushers the viewer into a nocturnal arena of alienation and desire that is at once forbidding and darkly magnetic. In these lush photographs, the elements intervene unexpectedly and alarmingly into suburban domestic space. Crewdson’s psychological realism is tempered in these images by their heightened theatricality, while themes of memory and imagination, the banal and the fantastic, function in concert with a narrative of pain and redemption that runs through American history and its picturing. In this Ovation TV original special, acclaimed photographers Albert Maysles, Sylvia Plachy, Andrew Moore and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders discuss the impact their work has on their lives and on culture as a whole.Complicit! Contemporary American Art & Mass Culture, University of Virginia Art Museum, Charlottesville, USA

Schwiegershausen, Erica (July 19, 2016). "How Gregory Crewdson Spends His Summer". The New York Times. With his realistic sculptures, the American artist Duane Hanson has become a synonym for contemporary realism in contemporary art. Typical motives are average people like housewives, waitresses, car dealers, janitors. Posture and expression of these figures are very close to reality. The photographer Gregory Crewdson arranges his large format pictures with cineastic arrangements and lets the abyss behind every-day life scenes become visible.The way Sherman's staged scenes were an innovation. During the 1970s, she began recreating stills from Hollywood movies, taking photographs of herself as a housewife, prostitute, etc. During the 1990s, photographers such as Crewdson began to develop Sherman's concept and created his own stills where he exposed the middle class in American small towns to scrutiny. There But Not There (2017) – short documentary about Crewdson's casting process, directed by Juliane Hiam [90] Despite the criticism, it is a worthwhile book. A little repetitive, but when the repetition is as gorgeous as it is, who’s complaining? Especially the exteriors/landscapes are wonderful. Of the 49 plates, cutting it down to around 40 would have tightened it, but overall, it’s still good. The pictures in this post, as I’ve said, don’t do this stuff justice because of limitations of resolution. The pictures in the book are a lot larger, which makes for a better experience, and I’m sure that viewing Crewdson’s exhibition prints — which are over 2m on the largest side (something like 89 by 58 inches) — would add another layer of detail and meaning. We print these images in large format at this size because it’s like… Well to me it’s like a picture window. Use of Light His work is set up, lit and acted in old-Hollywood fashion: houses are demolished, rooms are flooded and babies cry between shots. And his subjects are often residents of the small town he’s shooting in.

In a talk about his work last week, Crewdson spoke about the importance of maintaining a sort of innocence and naivety towards his images, which he says often come to him almost fully formed. There is, of course, a kind of childish innocence that revels in detail. And detail helps us get lost inside a picture, to enter its world uncritically, and be engulfed and entranced by it. Having so much to look at can be a kind of trap.Post-Historical Narrative in Contemporary Photography, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, USA