Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson

By Daniel Robert Epstein
Jan 26, 2006

Gregory Crewdson’s photographs have an immediate recognizable aesthetic. They are beautiful, eye catching and often times telling and depressing. His use of high contrast lighting and melancholy poses has made him a favorite of the art world and his work on the Six Feet Under campaign has given him mainstream recognition. His work has been shown in galleries all over the world while still reflecting his strong American roots. At the relatively young age of 43 his work will be influencing photographers for generations to come. Much of his work in the last 20 years has been printed in the book Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005 and the book, while large, is one that will draw you to each one of his photos and make you want to peer beneath everyone’s façade.

Buy Gregory Crewdson: 1985-2005

Daniel Robert Epstein: Is everything you’ve done up until now included this new book?
Gregory Crewdson: I guess you would call it a selected retrospective of my work. It is an overview but it’s certainly not every picture I’ve made during that period. But I think it reflects the various bodies of work I’ve made over the years.
DRE:
Were you going for a theme with the book?
GC:
It reflects the general themes and concerns that have driven my work over the last 20 years. It isn’t a conscious set of themes, just an expression of my interests, which would be an interest in finding a beauty, mystery or wonder in everyday life. Obviously trying to create a photographic accessibility through the use of light and color.
DRE:
Looking back at the older works in the book I didn’t realize that you had been exploring this idea for all this time. When did you first decide you wanted to explore everyday life?
GC:
The early photographs, which I did for my thesis when I was a graduate student at Yale, was the first expression of those interests. You can’t really get away from yourself, I think most artists have a single story they tell, and then they try to breathe the story into different forms.
DRE:
In pointing out these everyday things, did you know somehow that there was going to be this impending doom or danger or melancholy in them?
GC:
No, it’s like unconscious. I think all that can be located even in the earliest pictures. What was interesting was when I first began making pictures; I could’ve never guessed it would lead to the large scale productions of working with a 60 person crew. It was strange for my photo shoots to organically become larger and larger over the last 20 years because it happened on its own. In terms of the content that’s not even very conscious either. I just try to make the most beautiful picture I can.
DRE:
But it must have been conscious to the people at HBO when they hired you to do the ads for Six Feet Under.
GC:
What’s weird is that I have a general practice of not doing commercial work. I’ve always declined working for advertisements or fashion or editorial. The one exception to that is the Six Feet Under campaign which I agreed to do. It was a very good experience, but I don’t think I’d do it again.
DRE:
How come?
GC:
I think that you have to be very careful as an artist to protect your imagination and your aesthetic. The Six Feet Under campaign was an ideal situation because the show was great and they gave me complete control. It worked out in that case, but I typically do not work in that arena.
DRE:
When did you start doing the very large-scale productions?
GC:
It started happening slowly but surely. It wasn’t to a point where you look around and say, “Oh my God, there’s 60 people working on one of these pictures.” It started just with a few and got larger and larger. Now we’re getting ready for our winter pictures and it feels almost natural to put together a large crew and close down the main street of a town or whatever we’re doing. We have snowmakers and all sorts of things.
DRE:
A lot of filmmakers like to resist the word auteur because often they work with the same crew all the time, but how do you feel about that idea?
GC:
I work very closely with the same team. I usually work with the same director of photography, the same cameraman, producer, same production manager, same art director. It’s very much a collaborative process, but the reason why I work with these people is because they’re so great at what they do. They also know what I want in terms of a picture. So at the end of the day, I think my pictures do reflect my own vision of the world, but it’s very collaborative.
DRE:
When was the first time you had a 60 person crew on a shoot?
GC:
That’s happened over the last few years. We have a few ways of working. One is on location where we’re working at actual townships, neighborhoods and landscapes. Then the other way is when we’re working is on a soundstage and building sets. When we’re building sets, it tends to be a much bigger team because of the whole art department. When we’re working outside, we’re shooting the actual landscape with very little alteration; it’s mostly lighting is what transforms everything.
DRE:
Are there certain photos for you were touchstones?
GC:
What’s astonishing to me when I look at some of those early pictures; it’s all there. That’s just me photographing by myself. So it feels like it is part of one long thing. But when I first started doing the Twilight pictures with cinematographer Rick Sands that’s when I felt like it became something very particular to itself.
DRE:
I didn’t realize you were such a young guy.
GC:
I don’t feel so young.
DRE:
That’s because you work with a 60 person crew.
GC:
Yeah.
DRE:
I figured you were 65 year olds and that you had been doing this for years. Were there other people working in the same vein when you started?
GC:
I think you’re always working in context with other artists so you’re always being influenced. I like Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, and then other photographers who really influenced me as a younger artist were people like Joel Sternfeld. Then outside of photography there are filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, David Cronenberg, David Lynch.
DRE:
I read that you’re a horror movie fan as well.
GC:
Yeah.
DRE:
Are you fan of the Italian stuff like Dario Argento?
GC:
I think one thing that could be said about my work is that it has a very American sensibility. So I think it definitely comes out of an American place.
DRE:
Even though you’re pictures are staged, do you feel that you’re capturing reality?
GC:
I think I would call myself a realist. I’m trying to take everyday life and heighten it or magnify it and saturate it in a way. They’re really about real life. They’re real psychological things.
DRE:
Do they come out of something you’ve seen or is it an idea you’ve had or is it both?
GC:
It’s a combination of all those things, but with looking for locations, I literally drive around in a circle looking for the right place. That can take days and days. I was doing that all week actually, just driving around by myself in a car, looking for something that feels like it could be one of my pictures. Then once I find the right setting I first come to terms with what the picture might be.
DRE:
Do you take notes when you’re on these trips?
GC:
No, I just think. It’s just look, see and daydream. Then once I find the location, we come back with my director of photography and location scout and producer and start to figure out the logistics of closing down a street or getting permission to set lights. Finding locations is actually a lowly job but once that’s finalized, it takes on a life of its own.
DRE:
Looking at the set of Dream House pictures, I thought it was really interesting that you picked people like Dylan Baker.
GC:
Yeah, I love him.
DRE:
He’s one of my favorite actors. You obviously saw in him what [Happiness director] Todd Solondz saw in him as well. This veil of normalcy. Did Happiness inspire you?
GC:
I love that film and Todd Solondz is a good friend of mine so we have a shared sensibility.
DRE:
You also used William H. Macy. He and Dylan Baker look somewhat alike.
GC:
There’s something in both of them that I’m drawn to which is repressed anger or frustration or something. There’s a normalcy to them, but there’s also something beneath which feels angry or repressed.
DRE:
That seems to be a big part of your work since then, as well.
GC:
Yeah, that’s in a lot of my pictures.
DRE:
How repressed are you?
GC:
Fairly repressed. I think you have to in order make the pictures I make, they’re all about control.
DRE:
Do you get angry anymore?
GC:
Oh yeah. I get angry.
DRE:
When you get angry, is it mostly on a set?
GC:
No, I never get angry on a set. I try not to. I’m very anxious or frustrated at times, but I really love my crew and feel very fortunate to have them. There are always things that are outside of your control. With doing these winter pictures, there’s going to be all these elements like weather, temperature that we’re going to have to deal with.
DRE:
It’s very telling that your father was a psychoanalyst.
GC:
Yeah, he was a huge influence in my life.
DRE:
Is he still around?
GC:
No, he died just as I was starting to make the Twilight pictures. So he never really got to see the full maturity of my work, which always saddens me, but I think he would have approved.
DRE:
It’s interesting that you say it happened around the Twilight pictures because the next set you did was Dream House where the father has a prominent role. Are you a family man yourself?
GC:
Yeah, I have a wife and a young baby. Being a father is great.
DRE:
Has it changed your work much?
GC:
Yeah, I think so, but these things are so subtle in a certain way that it’s hard to see from afar. But having a child definitely changes you in a profound way.
DRE:
Does it make you want to do happier pictures?
GC:
No [laughs].
DRE:
A lot of people say that, “I want to do stuff for my kids.”
GC:
Yes, look at Sally Mann’s photographs.
DRE:
Do you want to make a feature film?
GC:
At this point there’s been a lot of discussion about that but I’m resistant to the idea because first and foremost, I’m a photographer and I think in terms of still images. Also there are a lot of people out there making films, so I don’t need to do that. I have a lot of close friends who are great filmmakers so I see the process close up. I realize that there are reasons why they do what they do and there are reasons why I do what I do.
DRE:
Do you write at all?
GC:
No I don’t and that’s a good reason right there. I think almost exclusively in terms of single images. When I make one of my pictures, I really don’t know what happened before or after. I don’t even know if I could put together a story cinematically.
DRE:
How many shots do you do on a single idea?
GC:
We set up the big eight by ten camera and the negative is eight by ten inches. We have a basic rule that once the camera is set up, it never moves. We shoot maybe 30 or 40 contact prints as the sun is going down. The reason we don’t move the camera is because we usually put together different elements from different negatives in post-production, so that’s why the pictures have such absolute focus. We’re actually sometimes using different elements from different negatives.
DRE:
What’s your feeling on digital right now?
GC:
I’m a big fan. I still love film in terms of the way it responds to light, but all of my stuff is scanned into a computer so that’s just another tool.
DRE:
How about taking pictures digitally?
GC:
No, I just do it in terms of my small format camera but at a certain point there will be the switchover but I’m not quite sure when. As of now, I think you can’t beat the combination of a large format negative and high-resolution scans and digital prints.
DRE:
What is this new set of winter pictures exactly?
GC:
A winter wonderland.
DRE:
So it is characters in winter?
GC:
I’m working that out now, but we’re going to do about eight pictures, in two different towns. I’ve never made a winter picture before so this is a big change for me.
DRE:
When will they be seen?
GC:
I only show every couple of years, so basically these pictures will be in a book I’m working on. Abrams is publishing a book of all the Beneath the Roses, so these pictures will be in that series.
DRE:
What do you know about SuicideGirls?
GC:
Wasn’t it started with those girls who photographed themselves with tattoos and stuff?
DRE:
Yeah.
GC:
Yeah, I love that. I totally respond to their aesthetic. I think they’re great. I actually saw something on HBO about them.
DRE:
Yes they were on Real Sex.
GC:
Those girls are great. Tell them I’m a big fan. I admire what they are doing, it’s really cool that there’s something that feels really new, yet at the same time, it’s connected to a larger, older tradition. I like the combination of them feeling like classic pin-up pictures, but it also feels like it’s reinvented for the contemporary moment.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

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