Under Exposed

Alien abductions, deserted streets and burning houses… Gregory Crewdson’s celebrated photographs might have a sinister edge but, discovers Anna Sansom, the man behind them doesn’t.

Gregory Crewdson has made a career out of faking it. In his 45 years, the Brookln-born artist has created some of the world’s most atmospheric staged photographs.  These eerie images, often shot during the Magic Hour, as twilight falls (“It’s a moment of perfection… I live for it,” he says) are arguably as close as a still image can get to cinema.  It’s no accident, then, that making and taking them involves enormous film-level crews of lighting experts, electricians and set-dressers. Creatively, Crewdson, who is inspired by the disconnected images of both Edward Hopper and Walker Evans, owes his biggest debt to his hero David Lynch. Like all three, Crewdson’s canvas is the wonder and anxiety that lies beneath small-town America. This spring sees new UK and US exhibitions of 32 large-scale Crewdson photographs that together comprise the second part of his acclaimed 2005 series, Beneath the Roses. 

These latest images continue to explore the intersection of theatricality and everyday life, but are less obviously dramatic than those in the first instalment. Instead of teenagers loitering on train tracks while a nearby house burns down, for instance, now the emphasis is more contemplative. “I wanted a sense of quietness, alienation and beauty,” explains the photographer. “I wanted the landscape to play a greater role in the psychological mood of the pictures, and for there to be a general sense of transience and rootlessness.” 

“I wanted a sense of quietness, alienation and beauty, I wanted the landscape to play a greater role in the psychological mood of the pictures, and for there to be a general sense of transience and rootlessness.”  

Crewdson concedes that the shift in atmosphere is linked to changes in his private life. “Since my last group of pictures I’ve had two children: a three-and-a-half year old called Lilly, who was born when my last group of pictures were completed, and a five-and-a-half month old called Walker. That probably gave some direction.” Certainly, the image of a lone mother sitting on the side of the bed in a drab motel room looking at her newborn baby recalls his recent parenthood. “I found this woman in Massachusetts and her son was two weeks old,” he adds. “The photograph is almost voyeuristic, with the camera looking in through the window and we see the details of the bathroom. I wanted her to feel a psychological ambivalence about the situation; how they’re not touching and how the baby is nestled in the corner of the bed all work to achieve that.”

Freudian staples like sex, mothers and nudity often appear in his work. Much has been made of the fact that Crewdson is the son of a psychoanalyst. His father’s office was located in the family basement and, as children, Crewdson and his brother and sister always knew when their father was in session and would wonder at the nature of those confidential conversations. “In retrospect, that created my first aesthetic viewpoint of trying to project images in my own mind,” he says. His other visceral childhood memory was visiting a Diane Arbus exhibition aged 10, which filled him with awe and terror. 

“Most of my ideas come from swimming underwater, and a lot of my pictures have water in them so it must be connected. I like to dive into a dream-world that I’ve made, chosen and have complete control over.”

After initially planning to follow in his father’s footsteps, Crewdson enrolled at Yale to study photography. His first picture was of a red car in front of a white picket fence and a white car. It’s no shock to learn, then, that he was obsessed with David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. “I had the distinct feeling it would change me,” he has said. Crewdson’s own fascination with American iconography, domesticity and cars has inspired similar backdrops ever since. Paradoxically, perhaps, given the undercurrent of unease in his images, Crewdson’s upbringing was a happy and stable one. “I think that it’s precisely because I had a loving, supportive family that I could visit a darker place in my imagination. All of us have fears, anxieties and desires that are forbidden or secret, and I feel that my stability allows me into that place.”

He gets ideas in two ways. The ones for his location images come from driving round small towns and landscapes, and those for his soundstage pictures come from swimming. Where possible, he prefers to swim in lakes, rivers, and the sea off Long Island. “Most of my ideas come from swimming underwater, and a lot of my pictures have water in them so it must be connected. I like to dive into a dream-world that I’ve made, chosen and have complete control over.”

Having complete control often means managing a crew of 50 or 60 people. When the moment comes to start shooting, Crewdson is not the one to press the button on the 8 x 10 camera but he knows exactly what he wants. “Hitchcock said that when the time came to start shooting film he didn’t need to look through the camera because he had pre-visualised everything,” he remarks. “I almost feel the same way. But there are always big questions when you’re making work, and layers of insecurity and doubt.” Post-production, several negatives are laced together to achieve the idealised picture. Start to finish, these highly stylised images take three or four months from the original location scout to the final retouching. Partly funded by his gallery, Luhring Augustine in New York, the expenses, admits Crewdson, are “enormous”.

“Hitchcock said that when the time came to start shooting film he didn’t need to look through the camera because he had pre-visualised everything. I almost feel the same way. But there are always big questions when you’re making work, and layers of insecurity and doubt.” 

In the past, Crewdson has used actors like Julianne Moore, William H. Macy and Jennifer Jason Leigh in his photos. But all the characters in his latest series are anonymous. As he says, “What I depict is very familiar and ordinary. I want the light and colour to transform the ordinary into something fantastic or strange or beautiful. There should always be that contrast.”

Crewdson’s images capture in-between moments and their complexity eludes him just like anyone else. “Every picture remains a mystery to me. One of the reasons I am a photographer and not a filmmaker is that I have no interest in what happens before or after one of my pictures. A picture should ask questions but not answer them.” 

Gregory Crewdson’s show is at White Cube, 25-26 Mason’s Yard, London, from 23 April to 24 May. His new book, Beneath the Roses, is published by Abrams.