The AI Interview: Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson 的访谈
by Robert Ayers
Untitled (Maple St.), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (North by Northwest), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Blue Period), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Summer Rain), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
[url]http://209.34.82.147/media/sm_Untitled_Trouble%20With%20Harry's_0603211741128.jpg
Untitled (Trouble With Harry’s), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Vanity), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Bed of Roses), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
_0603211756033.jpg)
Untitled (Nude Woman in Trailer), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
,%20Summer%202003_0603211809502.jpg)
Untitled (Merchant's Row), 2003, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson occupies a unique position in contemporary photography. His pictures are at once immediately recognizable and utterly perplexing. He specializes in obsessively detailed images of small-town America, lit in highly characteristic ways: His exteriors are repeatedly caught at moments of changing light (his hugely successful 2002 Abrams book was called Twilight) and his interiors are often patterned with complex pools of illumination.
Within these settings, his subject matter often suggests climactic moments in human relationships—though quite what these are remains ineffable. Crewdson’s last show of new work was a simultaneous three-gallery exhibition of his Beneath the Roses series last spring at Gagosian in Los Angeles, Luhring Augustine in New York and White Cube in London. His full-scale retrospective, Gregory Crewdson 1985-2005, is currently touring Hanover, Krefeld, Winthethur and Linz.
Gregory, can you start by telling me about the pictures you’ve been making recently?
We just got back from the winter production, where we made seven photographs, all of them in townships and with snow. For me it was very much about the interaction of the snow with the place.
Were you working with the usual big team? Your production methods are almost like movie-making in their scale, with whole teams of technicians.
Well, because of the changing weather, we had to work in a range of different ways to produce snow. We worked with a special effects person to produce massive amounts of snow on the ground with crushed ice—which really looked beautiful—and we also worked with snowmakers from the ski resorts. And then we got lucky and actually shot on the night of the February nor’easter. We were working on the main street of a town, and it worked out perfectly for us.
Now, as I understand it, you make your pictures in two different ways …
Basically there are two primary modes of working for me. One is working on location, when we are actually in a setting—a landscape, a townscape or a neighborhood of some sort—where we are dealing with actuality. The other, and these tend to be interiors, is when we are in a sound stage that we have built. It is just like a big studio. But I’m hoping that when you look at the pictures they all become part of the same world. It’s just a distinction in terms of making the pictures and less of a distinction in terms of the pictures themselves, which are brought together by the mood and the atmosphere and the light.
And the same artistic personality.
That’s what I hope for. I hope it all comes out of the same place.
Are they also similar in terms of the three phases of working that you sometimes talk about?
I divide it in my mind between pre-production, production and post-production.
The pre-production phase means imagining things?
Right. I don’t really work like other artists—or many artists, anyway. I don’t go to the studio each day and work on a painting. I wish I did sometimes [laughs]. There’s more downtime to think about things. We just talk a lot about what we want to do next, and where we might do it, and then there are a lot of meetings about putting together the resources to do it. But there’s nothing like making the actual pictures, that’s the best part.
That’s the production phase? That’s when you’re out there with your crew? I’ve seen that turn into a media event.
In some of the more public pictures it is. We have documentary photographers following us! I don’t really mind that part. But it’s weird. There is this hectic, anxious activity: Many people running around dealing with issues, and that all reaches a boiling point and then, when the picture is actually being made, it becomes very quiet and still and separate from all of that. For each picture, we shoot maybe 40 or 50 different 8" x 10" photographs from day to night.
So the snow pictures, at what stage are they?
We’re hard at work on them in terms of post-production. That becomes a whole other separate process. We pore over the contact prints to try to find one essential image and four or more elements from different parts of different negatives. Then all of that is put together on the computer to come up with one ultimate image. It’s a painstaking and very long process that all takes place in the studio here.
And when will you be exhibiting them?
I have no plans for exhibiting them yet. The way I work I think it’s better to hold work.
Is that because you sometimes change your mind about things?
Well, I’m very private about the whole process of it. I like the privacy and keeping the work internal. And yes, I change my mind.
It’s strange that you should say that about privacy, given what you were saying about the production stage.
We make these pictures with many, many people involved, but the number of people who actually see them in post-production is minimal. What I’m ultimately interested in is images, and everything else is a by-product of that. I hope that all of the production recedes in some way and you’re just left with the world of the picture.
I really do consider myself a photographer. That’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to make a film or work in video. There was a time when I was going to do a movie—and who knows, I might do something in the future—but one thing that I was concerned about was undermining my identity as a photographer. I respond to still images and to that tradition and to artists who have shaped that tradition. I am very invested in the tradition of the medium.
I think that’s clear in your work. I know that when people look at your work they want to know what happened before and after the moment the image was captured. But really that can only be speculative for a spectator.
And for me as well. In fact, I would put it another way: I’m not even interested in what happened before and after, I’m just interested in that suspended moment, in creating that moment. That’s why it bothers me when people say they’re like movies in one still, because a movie doesn’t exist in one still. What I make is a photograph ultimately.
Yes, I use a lot of cinematic production, but I feel like I use it photographically, not cinematically. I’ve been around enough movies to know that when you’re working on a movie you do
Gregory Crewdson 的访谈
by Robert Ayers
Untitled (Maple St.), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (North by Northwest), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Blue Period), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Summer Rain), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
[url]http://209.34.82.147/media/sm_Untitled_Trouble%20With%20Harry's_0603211741128.jpg
Untitled (Trouble With Harry’s), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Vanity), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Bed of Roses), 2005, from the series Beneath the Roses
Untitled (Nude Woman in Trailer), 2004, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Untitled (Merchant's Row), 2003, from the series Beneath the Roses
Gregory Crewdson
Gregory Crewdson occupies a unique position in contemporary photography. His pictures are at once immediately recognizable and utterly perplexing. He specializes in obsessively detailed images of small-town America, lit in highly characteristic ways: His exteriors are repeatedly caught at moments of changing light (his hugely successful 2002 Abrams book was called Twilight) and his interiors are often patterned with complex pools of illumination.
Within these settings, his subject matter often suggests climactic moments in human relationships—though quite what these are remains ineffable. Crewdson’s last show of new work was a simultaneous three-gallery exhibition of his Beneath the Roses series last spring at Gagosian in Los Angeles, Luhring Augustine in New York and White Cube in London. His full-scale retrospective, Gregory Crewdson 1985-2005, is currently touring Hanover, Krefeld, Winthethur and Linz.
Gregory, can you start by telling me about the pictures you’ve been making recently?
We just got back from the winter production, where we made seven photographs, all of them in townships and with snow. For me it was very much about the interaction of the snow with the place.
Were you working with the usual big team? Your production methods are almost like movie-making in their scale, with whole teams of technicians.
Well, because of the changing weather, we had to work in a range of different ways to produce snow. We worked with a special effects person to produce massive amounts of snow on the ground with crushed ice—which really looked beautiful—and we also worked with snowmakers from the ski resorts. And then we got lucky and actually shot on the night of the February nor’easter. We were working on the main street of a town, and it worked out perfectly for us.
Now, as I understand it, you make your pictures in two different ways …
Basically there are two primary modes of working for me. One is working on location, when we are actually in a setting—a landscape, a townscape or a neighborhood of some sort—where we are dealing with actuality. The other, and these tend to be interiors, is when we are in a sound stage that we have built. It is just like a big studio. But I’m hoping that when you look at the pictures they all become part of the same world. It’s just a distinction in terms of making the pictures and less of a distinction in terms of the pictures themselves, which are brought together by the mood and the atmosphere and the light.
And the same artistic personality.
That’s what I hope for. I hope it all comes out of the same place.
Are they also similar in terms of the three phases of working that you sometimes talk about?
I divide it in my mind between pre-production, production and post-production.
The pre-production phase means imagining things?
Right. I don’t really work like other artists—or many artists, anyway. I don’t go to the studio each day and work on a painting. I wish I did sometimes [laughs]. There’s more downtime to think about things. We just talk a lot about what we want to do next, and where we might do it, and then there are a lot of meetings about putting together the resources to do it. But there’s nothing like making the actual pictures, that’s the best part.
That’s the production phase? That’s when you’re out there with your crew? I’ve seen that turn into a media event.
In some of the more public pictures it is. We have documentary photographers following us! I don’t really mind that part. But it’s weird. There is this hectic, anxious activity: Many people running around dealing with issues, and that all reaches a boiling point and then, when the picture is actually being made, it becomes very quiet and still and separate from all of that. For each picture, we shoot maybe 40 or 50 different 8" x 10" photographs from day to night.
So the snow pictures, at what stage are they?
We’re hard at work on them in terms of post-production. That becomes a whole other separate process. We pore over the contact prints to try to find one essential image and four or more elements from different parts of different negatives. Then all of that is put together on the computer to come up with one ultimate image. It’s a painstaking and very long process that all takes place in the studio here.
And when will you be exhibiting them?
I have no plans for exhibiting them yet. The way I work I think it’s better to hold work.
Is that because you sometimes change your mind about things?
Well, I’m very private about the whole process of it. I like the privacy and keeping the work internal. And yes, I change my mind.
It’s strange that you should say that about privacy, given what you were saying about the production stage.
We make these pictures with many, many people involved, but the number of people who actually see them in post-production is minimal. What I’m ultimately interested in is images, and everything else is a by-product of that. I hope that all of the production recedes in some way and you’re just left with the world of the picture.
I really do consider myself a photographer. That’s one of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to make a film or work in video. There was a time when I was going to do a movie—and who knows, I might do something in the future—but one thing that I was concerned about was undermining my identity as a photographer. I respond to still images and to that tradition and to artists who have shaped that tradition. I am very invested in the tradition of the medium.
I think that’s clear in your work. I know that when people look at your work they want to know what happened before and after the moment the image was captured. But really that can only be speculative for a spectator.
And for me as well. In fact, I would put it another way: I’m not even interested in what happened before and after, I’m just interested in that suspended moment, in creating that moment. That’s why it bothers me when people say they’re like movies in one still, because a movie doesn’t exist in one still. What I make is a photograph ultimately.
Yes, I use a lot of cinematic production, but I feel like I use it photographically, not cinematically. I’ve been around enough movies to know that when you’re working on a movie you do
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