PHOTO: Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson’s photographs have take their place alongside the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch as indelible evocations of a silent psychological interzone between the everyday and the uncanny. Often working with a large team, Crewdson typically plans each image with meticulous attention to detail, orchestrating light, color, and production design to conjure dreamlike scenes infused with mystery and suspense.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Reflex Amsterdam Archive

Two exhibitions with works by Gregory Crewdson are on show in Reflex Amsterdam his new series of works “Eveningside” (2021-22) and a selection from previous bodies of work, including “Beneath the Roses” (2003-08) and “Cathedral of the Pines” (2013-14). Gregory Crewdson’s projects are made both on studio soundstages and on location in various small towns. After the photograph is taken, Crewdson continues his obsessive process in post-production, using state-of-the-art digital composting and special effects. And in the end-like film at its best-Crewdson’s fictions, elaborately staged and plotted though they may be, convey an experience that is intensely real. In “Eveningside” (2021-22), Crewdson explores moments of contemplation within the confines of quotidian life; in places of employment, and in moments just outside of those work structures. The figures populating the pictures are sparse, and are often seen through storefront windows, in mirror reflections, or positioned underneath the mundane proscenium found in the midst of their everyday routines: railroad bridges, doorways, porches, the overhanging roofline of a bank teller drive-through, a dairy bar, a corner market, or a hardware store. Bringing his vantage point closer to the figures, using a heightened range of light and darkness, special effects such as fog, rain, smoke and haze, and for the first time using his now ubiquitous full production and lighting team in a monochromatic palette, the result is a rich gothic atmosphere, evocative of film noir and classic cinema, but with the capabilities and clarity of the most current technology available in digital photography. In “Beneath the Roses” (2003-08), anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios. In one image a lone and pregnant woman stands on a wet street corner just before dawn: she is a small but a portentous still point in a world of trajectories. On a stormy night in another nondescript town, a man in a business suit stands beside his car, holding out a hand to the cleansing water in apparent mystification. In a plush bedroom, a man and a woman—prototypes of middle-class American dislocation—are visited by a songbird, who gazes at the woman from its perch on the vanity. Crewdson’s scenes are tangibly atmospheric: visually alluring and often deeply disquieting. Never anchored precisely in time or place, these and the other narratives of Beneath the Roses are rather located in the dystopic landscape of the anxious American imagination. “Beneath the Roses” has taken shape over the course of three years with the collaboration of a full production team. The starting point of “Cathedral of the Pines” (2013-14), was 2011 when Gregory Crewdson left New York to live to a remote home and studio in western Massachusetts. Coping with a difficult divorce, he found renewal in daily open-water swims and cross-country skiing on the wooded paths of the Appalachian Trail. There, he stumbled upon a trail called Cathedral of the Pines, which inspired new images. For the place he said in an interview “It was an aesthetic awakening, the trail name and the location at that moment sparked the inspiration for an entire body of work”. The series “Cathedral of the Pines” was made during three productions in and around the rural town of Becket, Massachusetts. Crewdson photographed figures in the surrounding forests, including the actual trail from which the series takes its title. Interior scenes charged with ambiguous narratives probe tensions between art, life, connection and separation, intimacy and isolation. The series comprises 31 digital pigment prints, in “Woman at Sink”, a woman pauses from her household upkeep, lost in thought. In “Pickup Truck”, Crewdson portrays a nude couple in the flatbed of a truck in a dense forest, the woman seated, the man turned away in repose. Crewdson situates his disconsolate subjects in familiar settings, yet their cryptic actions, standing still in the snow, or nude on a riverbank, hint at invisible challenges. Precisely what these challenges are, and what fate awaits these anonymous figures, are left to the viewer’s imagination. Crewdson’s photographs are elaborately staged and lit using large crews familiar with motion picture production and lighting large scenes using motion picture film equipment and techniques. But Crewdson says that “Cathedral of the Pines” presented new challenges. “We worked in total isolation. We had a small crew that worked on all three productions, dealing with unpredictable weather and extreme cold”.

Photo: Gregory Crewdson, The Mattress, 2014, Digital Pigment print , 95.3 x 127 cm, © Gregory Crewdson, Courtesy the artist and Reflex Amsterdam

Info: Reflex Amsterdam, Weteringschans 79A, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Duration: 11/3-6/5/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00 & Reflex Amsterdam Residence, Lijnbaansgracht 290A, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Duration: 11/3-6/5/2023, Days & Hours: Sat 14:00-18:00, https://reflexamsterdam.com/