Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson – Photographs 1985-2005
The Fotomuseum Winterthur presents a comprehensive overview of the bewitchingly beautiful but also disquieting oeuvre of the American photographer Gregory Crewdson (born in New York in 1962). All his important series are presented in the exhibition, including the recently completed Beneath the Roses made between 2003 and 2005.

Crewdson has dealt with the neuroses, fears, and secret desires of a society looking into the abyss of its own psyche since the mid-1980s. His images are set in suburban America and refer directly to the myths of Hollywood movies. The intricate and perfectly beautyful staged photographs were shot with the help of a large crew after weeks of extensive preparation on film-like studio sets or on location.

Himself an influential teacher at Yale University, Crewdson’s precise and realistic descriptions of rural America were influenced by the documentary style established by American photographers such as Walker Evans and William Eggleston. But with his use of theatrical lighting, employment of fantastic and enchanted elements and belief in a broad narrative style, he further developed the tradition of staged photography, which – since Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall at the very latest – has become one of the most important means of expression in contemporary photography.

The exhibition starts with the Early Works that Crewdson made as a graduate student from 1986 to 1988. The second group, Natural Wonder from 1992 to 1997, reflects Crewdson’s fascination with nature as a magical mythical zone full of mystifying events.

The third part is devoted to the programmatic series Twilight (1998-2002) with which Crewdson achieved international recognition. Here, the puzzling and dark energies of an untamable nature arrive in the living room: a tired, perspiring woman smeared with soil sits in her living room, which is entirely taken up by the flowerbed that she obviously just laid out herself. A boy is seen reaching into the drain of a shower, groping into the underground with his arm looking like an extremity separated from the rest of his body. Crewdson stages the act of establishing contact with the unconscious and the repressed.

In Hover, as well as in the later groups Twilight (1998-2002), Dream House (2002), and Beneath the Roses, 2003-2005, the artist worked more like a film director than a photog-rapher. Every motif required a large crew and extravagant production conditions similar to those on a film set. Artistically and technically, Crewdson has reached new heights in his most recent series, Beneath the Roses: entire streets were blocked off and empty houses were burned down (naturally with the appropriate permission of the local authorities). Up to 150 persons were involved in the production, including specialists for aerial photography and special effects, casting agents, crane operators, hair stylists and make-up artists. Even computer graphics specialists took part.

Crewdson deliberately utilised extensive digital composing technologies for the first time in Beneath the Roses to give it its typical hyper-realistic clarity, incredible depth and focused details.

Main sponsor of the exhibition: UBS AG

Publication: "Gregory Crewdson – 1985-2005". English/German. Ed. Stephan Berg, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, with texts by Stephan Berg, Martin Hochleitner and Katy Siegel. 248 pages, 131 colour photographs, format 30.3 x 26 cm, hardcover.

Public talk with Gregory Crewdson: Sunday, 4 June 2006, 11.30 a.m.