Living Photography
First of all, I have always loved photography. I think that photography can be a way of expressing yourself and expanding your imagination even more. When you take a photo of something that means that you are capturing a moment, different photographers capture moments in different ways. This is why I chose Gregory Crewdson, he is changing the way that we see photography. Most of the time that people think about photography, you imagine a person with a camera and some type of lighting. But Crewdson has changed that ideal and way of thinking, he puts his whole energy into one unique photo. Which to be honest really interests me because putting so much time into one photo seems like it’s not even photography, it’s something else. It’s amazing how his photos come out and you can see that there is always a story behind each photo. That’s the amazing part about his work, most of the time it’s dark and uncomfortable to look at but, that’s what makes it unique.
The big impact that he is putting out there is that photography can be made into a big thing and that it doesn’t have to be a boring photo of a city skyline. A photo can be a citinimatic walkthrough. Most of his photos feel lonely or uncomfortable to see, he also has many symbols through these photos, like one of his famous photos is a woman watching tv while her baby is laying right next to her and the bathroom in that motel would be the bathroom from psycho. He shows many symbols that main pop culture and even old culture may understand. He has said it himself, that there is something about still images, the fact that a picture cannot be resolved like a film can maybe that’s what makes his images dread. So his work impacts many people because of the way that everyone has to figure out what he is trying to mean in his images and things that he has hidden throughout his work. Many people see it as him putting a film into one photograph that many people may be able to relate too.
Gregory Crewdson, he is a photographer that takes one shot pictures. He was born on September 26 1962 in Brooklyn, New York. He went to State University of New York-Purchase College where he received his BA, in which he studied photography with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. He then graduated with a MFA in photography from Yale University. The main thing that he is known for is his elaborately staged scenes of small town american life. His photos are not just him with a camera most of the time, he usually has a whole crew with him, which makes the photos that he makes dramatic and cinematic. Gregory stages this carefully to photograph a tension between the unknown, nature and domesticity. Most of his photos have the people looking like they are in a trans or trapped in an unknown dream that they can’t escape. He became a professor in Yale university. Gregory has taken the aspect of photographers experiencing the world with edits, but actively creating it and photographing it.
Finally, Crewdson is a very successful photographer, he has had solo exhibitions at Houston center for photography in 1992, Cleveland center for contemporary art in 1997 and more recently open ends: set and situations at the museum of modern art in New York in 2002. He has also won many titles, such as the fellowships from the Aaron siskins foundation in 199, the national endowment for the arts in 1992, and in 2004 he received the Skowhegan medal for photography from the Skowhegan school of painting and sculpture. All in all, Crewdson is a tremendous photographer and a role model that I look up to, and if possible one day able to create similar work as him. His work is so unique and special that it connects to other people in a personal way sometimes.
Citation
Gregory Crewdson. The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gregory-crewdson
Gregory Crewdson – Bio: The broad. Bio | The Broad. (n.d.). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://www.thebroad.org/art/gregory-crewdson
Gregory Crewdson. Gagosian. (2018, April 12). Retrieved December 14, 2021, from https://gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/
