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CP: In Gregory's early photographs, we're on the ground, we're up close, we're in the world of super-saturated color. It's almost as if we've taken LSD ... and a very dramatic change happens when we go to the "Hover" series. Suddenly, we're in a totally black-and-white world and we're no longer on the ground. We're somehow floating way up in the air, and scenes of total improbable behavior are being acted out down below. It's an extraordinary shift, and it's one that in a kind of way prepares us for what we see later, when we're back on the ground. Inside these suburban homes that we're seeing in black and white in "Hover" it's almost as if Gregory is giving us a kind of establishing shot, to use a movie term, getting us prepared to go back into these houses later and see what's going on behind the doors of these small western Massachusetts families. EGG: How would you characterize Gregory Crewdson's suburban scenes? CP: The suburban scenes that we glimpse in the backgrounds of these early photographs is one that makes you think of the kind of safe, almost clichéd image of the suburbia that was common in the 1950s or 1960s. But as you look more carefully at what's happening in the foreground, you realize that these are all sort of hints and suggestions that something is amiss, that something is askew. The suggestion is that that all is not right in suburbia. In many of these pictures, too, the ominous objects in the foreground all suggest the cycles of birth and death, the cycles of nature's creation and destruction. In the end, these themes are at odds with the idea of the perfect timeless suburban facade where everything is neat and clean and tidy and will always stay that way. EGG: How do these photos explore suburban America? CP: In many of Gregory's photographs, the first impression you get is one of extreme tranquility. There is a kind of placidity in the scenes that he presents that reminds you of, say, Norman Rockwell images out of the '30s and '40s. But then you take a second look and the details start to pop out at you, these very uncomfortable and disturbing details. The result is to turn you into a kind of a voyeur and also a detective as you're trying to imagine exactly what kind of sequence of events, what kind of logic could've led up to this moment, this scene that's before your eyes. I think all of us like to think of home as a place of refuge, a place of safety that is somehow cut off from the chaos of the outside world. With Gregory's photographs, as you start to look at them you realize that home is not always the place of safety or tranquility. Instead, we see that there are sometimes strange, private rituals that get played out behind closed doors. It's because he opens those doors up to us that suddenly we are put in the position of a kind of voyeur who is confronted with these scenes that can barely be imagined. EGG: What was your first reaction to Gregory Crewdson's "Twilight" series? CP: I remember walking into the gallery and seeing the photographs in the "Twilight" series when that work was first up in New York about a year ago. I was familiar with Gregory's earlier work, these uncanny scenes featuring birds and insects and dismembered body parts, and when I saw the pictures in the "Twilight" series I thought: "He's really made an enormous jump." For the first time, he's working convincingly with human figures. He's really tapping into a real sort of human psychological situation, which I found enormously compelling and persuasive. It seemed to be something he had been building up to over the course of years, and I felt that at a certain moment he just realized that he had to make that jump beyond the staged scenes into a different, more personal kind of realm. EGG: How would you compare Crewdson's photographic setups to other modern photographers? CP: For a long time, American commercial photographers have worked with enormous studio setups and whole crews of lighting people, stylists, and so on. But it's been very rare, up until this point, to find an independent artistic photographer willing to go to the same enormous lengths to create extraordinary studio visual effects. I think looking at Gregory's photographs it's very hard to see, at first glance, just the extraordinary crew that he has assembled in order to create these images. Lighting specialists, stylists, just this whole range of people are operating behind the scenes, and whose efforts all go into creating a spectacular image. EGG: How do the people living in the community where Crewdson shoots come into play? What is their role? CP: One thing I find really extraordinary is the way Gregory has been able to return year after year to the same town in western Massachusetts and enlist the ongoing cooperation of the people who live there. It's almost as if he's turned a whole little town into a permanent repertoire company ... and he obviously uses people in various roles and in various ways. I'm sure it creates an extraordinary sense of community there that may or may not have existed before. You get the feeling looking at the photographs that probably this is one of the high points of local life. You imagine the community waiting for the photographer to come each year from New York with a whole new range of outlandish ideas that he's able to convince them that it's absolutely necessary to help him carry out. |
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