Alex Prager and Gregory Crewdson

Every time I approach a photograph by Alex Prager or Gregory Crewdson I imagine a different scenario that led to that moment and then the moment immediately following. David Campany says in Photography and Cinema that many film theorists see photography as “awaiting cinematic articulation as one of 24 per second.” Their photographs truly feel like one of twenty-four per second. That there is a beginning and end that we are deprived of, to forever only see the middle.

The narrative that these images create asks questions about the suspension of disbelief. Is there a believable string of events that would lead to the situation presented in the photograph, or is this purely a staged image to illicit these feelings of uneasiness and tension? Both Crewdson and Prager straddle this line, creating images solidly grounded in our own reality and images that are not. Not knowing exactly what has happened is what makes photography so special and different from cinema. Barthes (1993, p.96) said, “the photograph, taken in flux, is impelled, ceaselessly drawn toward other views; in the cinema, no doubt, there is always a photographic referent, but this referent shifts.” Barthes argues that a photograph arrests its subject in time, in a point of limbo, with no past or future. It just records something “that-has-been”. The photograph is made endless by the viewer’s own contemplations on what could have happened before and after the closing of the shutter. The level of uncertainty inherent in the medium is what makes them photographic rather than the cinematic, but still there is a sense of the cinematic. Barthes also said “[cinema] does not make a claim of its reality, it does not protest its former existence”.

This is where the true cinematicality of Gregory Crewdson and Alex Prager lies. Their images do not feel real. There is a referent, something real that was photographed but it is so very obviously an actor on a set. The method of production, on large artificially lit locations and sound stages, the eerie atmosphere and unbelievable situations create a sense of artifice. Drama can be found all throughout photography, but it is this artifice that makes these images cry out to Hollywood cinema.