Gregory Crewdson (born September 26, 1962) is an American photographer. He photographs
tableaux
The International Conference on Automated Reasoning with Analytic Tableaux and Related Methods (TABLEAUX) is an annual international academic conference that deals with all aspects of automated reasoning with analytic tableaux. Periodically, it jo ...
of American homes and neighborhoods.
Life and career
Crewdson was born in the
Park Slope
Park Slope is a neighborhood in northwestern Brooklyn, New York City, within the area once known as South Brooklyn. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park and Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Aven ...
neighborhood of
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
, New York. He attended
John Dewey High School
John Dewey High School is a public school in Gravesend, Brooklyn, New York City. It was founded and based on the educational principles of John Dewey. The school, under the supervision of the New York City Department of Education, was named a Ne ...
.
As a teenager, he was part of a power pop group called The Speedies that hit the New York scene. Their song, "Let Me Take Your Foto" proved to be prophetic to Crewdson's future career. In 2005,
Hewlett Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
used the song in advertisements to promote its digital cameras.
At Purchase College, State University of New York, he enrolled in a Photo 101 class taught by
Laurie Simmons
Laurie may refer to:
Places
* Laurie, Cantal, France, a commune
* Laurie, Missouri, United States, a village
* Laurie Island, Antarctica
Music
* Laurie Records, a record label
* ''Laurie'' (EP), a 1992 album by Daniel Johnston
* "Laurie (Stran ...
on a whim, and fell in love with the medium. He went on to study with Jan Groover before graduating. He then received his MFA in Photography at the Yale School of Art, where he is now a professor and director of graduate studies in Photography. In 2012, he was the subject of the feature documentary film Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. The film series followed the construction and the behind-the-scenes explanation from Crewdson himself of his thought process and vision for his pieces of his collection ''Beneath the Roses''.
Crewdson is represented by
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in Par ...
.
Crewdson has been awarded the Skowhegan Medal for Photography and a
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal ...
fellowship. His work has been shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Brooklyn Museum.
He has two children, Lily and Walker, with his ex-wife Ivy Shapiro.
Style
Crewdson's photographs are elaborately staged and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production and lighting large scenes using motion picture film equipment and techniques. Using shots that resemble film productions, Crewdson deconstructs American suburban life in his work. He has cited the films ''
Vertigo
Vertigo is a condition where a person has the sensation of movement or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties w ...
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' is a 1977 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, Cary Guffey, and François Truffaut. It tells the story ...
Safe
A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body and ...
'' as having influenced his style, as well as the painter
Edward Hopper
Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was an American realist painter and printmaker. While he is widely known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching.
Hopper created subdued drama ...
and photographer
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus (; née Nemerov; March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971 " The New York ...
.
Gregory Crewdson's most widely-known bodies of work include ''Twilight'' (1998–2002), ''Beneath the Roses'' (2003–2008), ''Cathedral of the Pines'' (2013–2014) and ''An Eclipse of Moths''. He works much like a director with a budget similar to that of a small movie production, each image involves dozens of people and weeks to months of planning.
Crewdson's only body of work made outside of the U.S. was ''Sanctuary'' (2009), set at the abandoned Cinecittá studios outside of Rome. Nearly all of his other work before and since was made in the small towns and cities in Western Massachusetts.
Exhibitions
*
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...
Jay Jopling
Jeremy Michael "Jay" Jopling (born June 1963) is an English art dealer and gallerist. He is the founder of White Cube.
Early life
Jay Jopling is the son of Michael Jopling, Baron Jopling, a Conservative politician who served for some time as ...
/
White Cube
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery founded by Jay Jopling in London in 1993. The gallery has two branches in London: White Cube Mason's Yard in central London and White Cube Bermondsey in South East London; White Cube Hong Kong, in Centra ...
Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, Cleveland, OH, 1997
* Espacio Uno,
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The ''Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía'' ("Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre"; MNCARS) is Spain's national museum of 20th-century art. The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992, and is named for Queen Sofía. It ...
, Madrid, Spain, 1998; and traveled to Salamanca, 1999
* Rudofinium Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic, 2008
* ''Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities'', Museum
Frieder Burda
Frieder Burda (29 April 1936 – 14 July 2019, in Baden-Baden) was a German art collector and Honorary Citizen of Baden-Baden.
Life
Born on 29 April 1936 in Gengenbach, Burda was the second son of publisher Franz Burda and his wife Aenne Burda ( ...
, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2010–2011
*
Kulturhuset
House of Culture (Swedish: Kulturhuset) is a cultural center situated to the south of Sergels torg in central Stockholm, Sweden. The House of Culture has been described as a symbol for Stockholm as well as of the growth of modernism in Sweden. ...
, Stockholm, Sweden, 2011
* ''Gregory Crewdson: In a Lonely Place'',
C/O Berlin
C/O Berlin is a private exhibition space for photography and visual media in Berlin. It is located in Amerika Haus Berlin by Zoologischer Garten station, Charlottenburg, where it has more than 2,500 square metres of space. C/O Berlin presents work ...
, Berlin, 2011; and traveled to
Det Kongelige Bibliotek
The Royal Library ( da, Det Kongelige Bibliotek) in Copenhagen is the national library of Denmark and the university library of the University of Copenhagen. It is among the largest libraries in the world and the largest in the Nordic countrie ...
, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011/2012)
*''Cathedral of the Pines,''
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are 16 gallery spaces: five in New York City; three in London; two in Par ...
, New York, NY, 2016;
The Photographers' Gallery
The Photographers' Gallery was founded in London by Sue Davies opening on 14 January 1971, as the first public gallery in the United Kingdom devoted solely to photography.
It is also home to the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, established in ...
Harry N. Abrams
Abrams, formerly Harry N. Abrams, Inc. (HNA), is an American publisher of art and illustrated books, children's books, and stationery.
The enterprise is a subsidiary of the French publisher La Martinière Groupe. Run by President and CEO Michael ...
, 2002. . With an essay by
Rick Moody
Hiram Frederick Moody III (born October 18, 1961) is an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel ''The Ice Storm'', a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 19 ...
.
* ''Gregory Crewdson: 1985–2005.''
Hatje Cantz
Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeRizzoli, 2013. .
* ''Cathedral of the Pines.'' New York:
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane.
An opt ...