Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

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In this article, we will provide an introduction to the career and photography style of one of the most important fine-art photographers today. A Thousand Hounds. A Walk with the Dogs Through the History of Photography, UBS PaineWebber Art Gallery, New York, USA 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. Despite the large scope of his productions, Crewdson’s carefully composed scenes and controlled lighting recall the intricate arrangements of early still life photography. 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.

For three decades, Crewdson’s photographs of houses, landscapes, and people have become canonical representations of the liminal and forgotten in America. Series such as Twilight(1998–2002), Beneath the Roses (2003–08), and Cathedral of the Pines (2013–14) show fantastical scenes of wonder and anxiety, their quiet, bristling stillness implying an airless claustrophobia that persists even in wide-open expanses.Contemporary Photography in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, USA 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.

A limited-edition book with a text by Jeff Tweedy, published in a series of 750 signed copies, will be released by Aperture to coincide with the exhibition. The still, emotionally charged scenes in the artist’s work have a brooding quality, but also sometimes real sense of peace. In his photographs, you might see a light shining down from the sky, or a mother observing her sleeping child, for example. But there is also a real sense of isolation, alienation, and aspects of the grotesque haunting his oeuvre. He cites both David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and the work of Japanese silent film director Yasujiro Ozu as direct influences on his aesthetic. In the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman began taking a series of photographs in which she re-created the promotional stills from Hollywood B-movies. Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of twenty new photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson continues his ongoing series of elaborately staged, large-scale color photographs that explore the psychological underside of the American vernacular. The photographs combine a realist aesthetic sensibility with a highly orchestrated interplay of cinematic lighting, staging, and special effects. This collision between the normal and the paranormal produces a tension that serves to transform the topology of the suburban landscape into a place of wonder and anxiety.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.

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). Dream House, Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, France 2003 Gregory Crewdson. Dream House, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco, USA (solo) Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic (solo) 2008 Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico 2008 Gregory Crewdson, White Cube, London, England (solo) A survey of Crewdson’s work of the previous twenty years toured European museums from 2005 to 2008. The exhibition In a Lonely Place traveled to galleries and museums across Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand from 2011 to 2013, and a major monograph was published by Rizzoli in 2013. Crewdson’s awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Photography, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship, and the Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship.

Twilight series. Begun in 1998 and completed in 2002, Twilight consists of forty photographs created as elaborately staged, large-scale tableaux that explore the relationship between the domestic and the fantastical, between the North American landscape and the topology of the imagination. I Never Thought What You Were Telling Me Was True or a Product of Your Imagination, Galeria Estrany De La Mota, Barcelona, Spain