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Gregory Crewdson
The course manual directs us to watch a video that is no longer available on YouTube and I can find no alternative links on the student website which is rather disappointing.
I have done a brief search on YouTube for the photographer and have looked at some of his work and watched the interview below.
Not knowing the context of the video the college was pointing us to it is hard to know what they are looking for when they as us to consider the questions below, but as this is art there is no such thing as wrong…
Do you think there is more to this work than aesthetic beauty?
Crewsons’ work is very cinematic in its colour palette, very reminiscent of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and the famous painting Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. So there is a beauty to them but it is certainly not a traditional form of beauty; for while the lighting and colour palette are stunning the subject and pictures as a whole give a sense of unease to the viewer.
How Crewson works is large scale, very much like a movie production – these scenes are staged and planned with many, many assistants involved. In fact, I doubt that he has the physical capacity or skill to produce these images on his own – he is as a photographer is more akin to a Movie Director or Producer.
Do you think Crewson succeeds in making his work ‘psychological’? What does this mean?
I have no idea what is meant by psychological work – are you saying that they are there to make the viewer think?
I see images that are static, like a diorama, there is no movement everything looks very deliberately posed a lot of the time I can’t see what the photographer is asking me to think about – I more often wonder what was they photographer trying to say what was in his mind.
Many of the images are very dark and as I have said give a sense of unease, but at the same time are very ordinary (to an American audience) scenes.
Crewson himself as said he has enough of the story to bring the viewer in, but there care no answers in the images just questions so perhaps he does make psychological images because the stories the viewers see are from there mind not Crewson’s.
What is your goal when making pictures? Do you think there is anything wrong with making beauty your main goal? Why, or why not?
My main goal when I take a picture is to have something that I like, second is that someone else likes.
I take photographs unlike Crewson who creates them. Mainly a combination of street style and travel photography
I want to capture life, emotion that I see, I not trying to explore my inner self and lay it bare for the world to see in my photographs.
And there of course nothing wrong with setting to capture beauty in a photograph that is why we take certain styles of pictures. However, there is a fine line before this falls into the banal for example when photographers only every photography pretty girls.