Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

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Although Crewdson has described himself as an ‘an American realist landscape photographer’, he makes filmic images that strongly reference TV programmes such as The Twilight Zone or films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind that deal with fantasy and the paranormal. In this series of intensely, almost luridly coloured and exuberantly detailed images, Crewdson employs a cinematic, directorial mode of photography, the culmination of weeks of planning and complicated, behind-the-scenes production. Most of the photographs challenge the viewer to construct a narrative from the visual clues delivered in these moments of stasis which seem to precede or follow a dramatic event, some sort of violence that contrasts sharply with the stillness of the scene portrayed; Several of Crewdson's students are now successful photographers in their own right. Teaching, he says, is ideal for an artist because he gets to learn what the next generation are doing, what they're reading, what they're listening to, and to talk about form and composition. "It's so rare that you actually do that as an artist," he says. "We end up talking about everything else -galleries, the market. Everything but the art itself."

The series takes its title from an entomological term. Moths use transverse orientation to fly at a constant angle relative to a distant light source, such as the moon; exposure to artificial light confuses the insects’ internal navigation, changing their behavior and destination. Crewdson anchors his photographic figures in relation to a source of light: a street lamp or traffic light, or the hesitant, transitional illumination of twilight. In each image, the viewer is positioned above in a semi bird’s-eye vantage point. My favorite photographer is sort of not a photographer. Perhaps less of one if a photographer captures spontaneous reality, more than one if a photographer just takes pictures. Gregory Crewdson creates tableaux vivants not of mythical scenes or famous paintings, but of enigmatic disruptions of everyday North American life.

Twilight

With a budget similar to that of an independent movie, Crewdson transforms his real, suburban settings into entirely fictional worlds.

Gregory Crewdson’s photographs of suburban America, immaculately staged and often filled with a sense of isolation, have forever changed the language of contemporary photography. Twilight features a series of photographs that depict scenes of bizarre and unusual events with several of them appearing supernatural-like or even involving potential signs of extra-terrestrial life. Twilight consists of a total of 40 photographs that were captured between 1998 and 2002. Settings and Players: Theatrical Ambiguity in American Photography, White Cube, London, England and The City Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic I always loved movies and the look of movies,” Crewdson explains to American Photo. “I’m also a huge student of movies—but could never make one. Working in a linear fashion is foreign to me. I was always interested in using aspects of film production towards a single image—the relationship between movie making and still photography—and blurring the lines between the two. I’m fascinated with telling a story in a single image rather than through time.” In Crewdson’s photographs a collision between the normal and the paranormal exists which serves to transform the familiar suburban landscape into a place of wonder and anxiety. This series of images has become increasingly dark, penetrating the psychological disquiet at the heart of the American family.

Biography

Ranging in appearance from avant garde installation pieces of gloom and organic matter to stills from a lost David Lynch movie, this collection's constructed photographic art pieces reverberate with one theme: In a career that spans more than three decades, Crewdson has produced several widely acclaimed bodies of work including Natural Wonder (1997), Twilight (2002),and Dream House (2008). The large-format camera helps capture all the detail for his huge 7ft gallery prints.His images are enhanced digitally in photoshop and sometimes stitched together before printing. Vision From America: Photographs From the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940-2001, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA

I’m only concerned with that particular moment, the moment of the picture. I really don’t have any interest in what happens before, or what happens after. In a certain way, it’s a privilege that I don’t have to think about plot, or storyline, or character development, that I can just focus on that moment, and how to make that moment as beautiful and as mysterious as possible. The Stills Director David Lynch’s Blue Velvet […] would be the movie that defined me as I was coming of age. I encountered it when I was a graduate student at Yale. I remember feeling deeply connected to how it used the American vernacular, and revealed something more dark and sinister underneath it. I was also completely connected to the way it looked: the use of light and darkness. I’m not saying it’s the best movie ever made, but the one that defined me the most.” Contemporary art, staged photography, time, suspense, mystery, American suburbia, and psychological RealismGregory Crewdson is an American photographer who is known for his staged and surreal color images of American suburbia. Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005, DA2. Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Spain; Hasselblad Center, Goteborg, Sweden; Palazzo delle esposizioni, Rome, Italy; Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic (solo) Jordan Anthony is a film photographer, curator, and arts writer based in Cape Town, South Africa. Anthony schooled in Durban and graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, with a Bachelor of Art in Fine Arts. During her studies, she explored additional electives in archaeology and psychology, while focusing on themes such as healing, identity, dreams, and intuitive creation in her Contemporary art practice. She has since worked and collaborated with various professionals in the local art industry, including the KZNSA Gallery in Durban (with Strauss & Co.), Turbine Art Fair (via overheard in the gallery), and the Wits Art Museum.

I didn’t start taking pictures until I was in college. I had a crush on a girl who was photo major, and followed her into a photography class. My Photography teacher was Laurie Simmons, and my crush went from the girl to my teacher. As soon as I took my first pictures, my crush shifted from the teacher to photography. Gregory Crewdson Archivo Pons Artxiboa, Erakusketa - Exposicion, 45.zk.No.45, Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea, San Sebastian, Spain These pictures are a meditation on brokenness, a search, a longing, and a yearning for meaning and transcendence. The figures are surrounded by vast decaying industrial landscapes and the impinging nature ― and there’s a certain underlying suggestion of anxiety. But I hope in the end the theme of nature persisting, and of figures seeking out light, offers hope for renewal, even redemption.

Gregory Crewdson’s staged tableau of American suburbia was shot in enigmatic and theatrical scenes that convey surreal landscapes and ensembles, which leave one with a sense of curiosity and suspense. Crewdson’s ability to construct elaborate fictional compositions that evoke a sense of the familiar while leveraging American suburbia as a metaphor for the human psyche is remarkable. Below, we will look at a few Crewdson photos that reveal the extraordinary universe of the mundane and highlight the fantastical mindset of Gregory Crewdson.