Lighting Master
IT’S 1967. MUFFLED VOICES FLOAT UP THROUGH the floorboards as five-year-old Gregory Crewdson plays in the living room of his family’s home in Brooklyn. Greg’s father, a psychoanalyst, is seeing a patient in his basement office. The child strains to hear what is being said, but the words are unintelligible. He goes back to playing, but the Freudian realm beneath the floorboards has registered in his mind as a mysterious place where stories are told and secrets reside. Fast forward to 2007. Crewdson, now 45, is working on his latest series of photographs, “Beneath the Roses.” His canvas is suburban and small-town America—a familiar milieu where the lawns are mowed, the streets are empty and little seems to be happening on the surface. But “Beneath the Roses” isn’t about surfaces. Four years in the making—with the final images slated for production this summer and a book due out next spring—the project presents small-town America as might have been seen by Sigmund Freud. “Beneath the Roses” is Crewdson’s most ambitious series to date, with sixfigure production budgets for many of the images, lighting and production crews of 50 people or more, and production values that rival those of a Hollywood film. Working with director of photography Richards Sands, his alter ego and keeper of the light, Crewdson has created a parallel universe teeming with neuroses, harbored secrets, unhealthy obsessions, repressed desires and uneasy alliances. More than ever before, light is a powerful narrative force in these elaborately staged images: atmospheric, transformative and haunting. “Beneath the Roses” is a world suspended in twilight— masterfully rendered by Sands, who had already spent 20 years lighting big-budget Hollywood films before beginning his decade-long collaboration with Crewdson. A house bursts into flame, a woman floats face up in a flooded living room and familiar American traditions such as Sunday dinner take on new and disturbing dimensions. In every image, Crewdson’s recurring themes of anxiety and loneliness, isolation and alienation unfold like a troubled dream. “The viewer is left to imagine what comes before or after, because my photos are unresolved,” says Crewdson, who confesses that even he doesn’t always know what the pictures are about. Although Crewdson’s work has become more subtle and less shocking as he has matured as an artist, he still seems happiest when he is rooting around in the darker recesses of the American psyche. Reportedly, when directing Gwyneth Paltrow for his Dream House series, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, Crewdson’s sole art direction, delivered sotto voce, was “More shame.” COURTESY GREGORY CREWDSON
TECH
ALL PHOTOS © GREGORY CREWDSON
Gregory Crewdson’s Twilight World In elaborately staged productions with six-figure budgets, Gregory Crewdson and director of photography Richard Sands illuminate the dark side of the American Dream. By Susan Reich
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Look at his cinematic images long enough and you’ll see intimations of Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind; the paintings of Edward Hopper; images by Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Cindy Sherman. “My pictures are very psychological—and the core themes and issues never change. That’s something my therapist would confirm,” says Crewdson with a chuckle. “The work isn’t directly autobiographical, but the pictures definitely reflect my psychological fears and anxieties and desires.” A surprisingly affable and upbeat guy, Crewdson planned to follow in his father’s profession—until he enrolled in an introductory photography course while studying psychology as an undergraduate at State University of New York at Purchase. “I was hooked from that moment,” recalls Crewdson, who eventually got his masters at Yale. “Photography is very connected—in a profound way—to voyeurism. Because my father was a psychoanalyst, I think I was always interested in the forbidden, in secrets, in something terrifying or strange. From the very beginning, my photography was about trying to find a sense of mystery in everyday life, about trying to use color and light to tell a story— an internal story—in pictures.” It’s no wonder, then, that novelist A.M. Homes, writing in Artforum, described Crewdson as “Norman Rockwell meets Norman Bates.” Clearly, Crewdson still has one ear pressed to the floorboards, drawing his creative inspiration from the angst that lurks just beneath the surface of middleclass American life. PDN: Your psychological influences are pretty well documented. How about some of your creative influences? Gregory Crewdson: When I was 10, my father brought me to a MoMA retrospective of Diane Arbus’ work. I think, on an unconscious level, that I first understood the power of photography when I saw that exhibit. There was something terrifying about her pictures, but also absolutely fascinating. It was a defining experience for me. As a young photographer, I was influenced by Walker Evans and William Eggleston and Lee Friedlander. What I respond to most about their work is their interest in the American vernacular, the American landscape. I would include Joel Sternfeld in that mix too. But, at the same time, I was very interested in films and painting and literature. PDN: Are there any visual artists who have influenced your lighting style in particular? Crewdson: Edward Hopper’s paintings were great
lessons for me in terms of the way that lighting can transform ordinary life. If you look at his paintings carefully, the light is not in any way naturalistic. There are also these impossible geometries of light, so I respond to his work in that way as well. I love the light in so many of Hitchcock’s films, particularly Vertigo, which is like a strange and enchanting dream. Orson Welles was an influence for his use of light and deep space. David Lynch is a huge influence in terms of his saturated color and darkness and the tension between the two. That is a big dynamic in my pictures: the contrast between light and darkness and color and how that is so important to the story being told. The contrast creates a distinction between what is known about an image and what remains mysterious or inaccessible. PDN: Can you remember the first time you made a photograph that you loved? Crewdson: The first picture that had any meaning for me was shot in Massachusetts when I was an undergraduate. It was a picture of a red car parked in front of a picket fence outside of a suburban house. I was immediately interested in it because it seemed familiar and even iconic, but it also seemed hyperreal, in terms of the colors and the saturation. I’ve always loved that combination of something that feels familiar and strange at the same time, which is essentially the uncanny. I’m still doing variations on that scene. PDN: Do you see yourself as a fine artist who uses photography as a means to an end, or as a photographer? Crewdson: I’m an artist who uses photography, that’s true. But I feel very strongly that I come out of the tradition of photography even though my work is clearly influenced by film, painting and sculpture. I’ve always thought of myself exclusively as a photographer, because I think exclusively in terms of single images, about a frozen moment in time. PDN: When you were a graduate student at Yale, you spent one summer making pictures in the small towns around Becket, Massachusetts, where your family owns a log cabin and you spent vacations as a kid. But, even as a graduate student, you weren’t interested in making a traditional document. Crewdson: That’s right. Instead, I used the towns as settings to stage my own narratives. I’d just knock on people’s doors and ask if I could create some kind of narrative. I show them my work and, most of the time, the people would say no. But sometimes people said yes. I’d bring in my lights and set up this quiet psychological narrative, using color and light to create a mood. I was using the camera as a kind of alibi to enter another world; it was voyeuristic in a way, but also trans-
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