Gregory Crewdson’s photographs almost always project solitude and intimacy, even if his images take a team to organize. The subject of one of his images looks back at the experience. Source: Alone, in a Crowd, With Gregory Crewdson – The New York Times

I’m not quite sure what to think about Gregory Crewsdon’s work and suspect that these large canvases need to be seen in their full glory to really appreciate them. Small images on the web may not do it. The NY Times article mentioned above refers to a recent (Jan-March, 2016) exhibition of his work at the Gagosian Gallery. I meant to go into New York City to see it, but typically for me never found the time to go. Ah well – another time.

Below two reviews, from Australia, of an exhibition of Crewsdon’s work in 2012, the first one negative and the second one positive.

Photographer Gregory Crewdson at The Centre for Contemporary Photography in Fitzroy. Photo: Joe Armao. Source: Sydney Morning Herald

American painters like Edward Hopper and the photorealist Richard Estes in their mysterious stasis.In painting, if you want to make something look brighter or mistier or on fire, you just toss in appropriate colours while building your volumes and edges. But in photography, you have to bring in lights and fog machines and incendiaries; and even then, the effects often look phoney. Crewdson is a master of directorial fakery, creating memorably unnatural-looking photographs that seem wilfully inauthentic.

I wish I could say the images are atmospheric. But the pictures are stilted and airless. You feel that if the wind were to blow, it would only be because someone was instructed to plug in a fan.

The human subjects in Beneath the roses strike me as lifeless, perhaps because of long exposures, during which everyone is ordered to stand still. The scenes mostly have a tragic air with incomplete narratives; but because of the contrived lighting, atmosphere and paralytic acting, they’re enigmatic in a goofy way. By suggesting some profound condition which is only staged as artifice, the work unwittingly strays into the burlesque.

Crewdson’s dramas seem both obvious and obscure. If you only saw one, you’d think it’s very clever and symbolically meaningful. But seeing a dozen weakens the intrigue, because the action in one picture looks more arbitrary than in the last.

Source: In a Lonely Place review, Sydney Morning Herald

© Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

After the excoriating, unreasonably subjective diatribe by Robert Nelson in The Age newspaper (“Unreal stills, unmoving images” Wednesday October 17 2012) I hope this piece of writing will offer greater insight into the work of this internationally renowned artist. With some reservations, I like Crewsdon’s work, I like it a lot – as do the crowds of people flocking to the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy to see the exhibition. Never have I seen so many people at the CCP looking at contemporary photography before and that can only be a good thing.

Source: In a Lonely Place review, Art Blart

Leave a Reply