Gregory Crewdson is an American photographer born in New York, he has worked for 30+ years producing pieces that can seem disturbing, bringing to light question of if it is actually real. Crewdson has said himself he has taken strong inspiration from multiple films like “Vertigo”, “Blue Velvet”, and other films in the paranormal genre. This has changed his style into a still frame of these ghostly context-less events questioning reality and the story behind it, which has been left to the reader; this is emphasised by the fact that many of his pieces are untitled.
Gregory Crewdson uses huge teams with large budgets to produce visual scenes that ascend time and bring you to a place that seems familiar but also incredibly strange stretching your grasp of reality, with extremely surreal events. To produce these pieces, he uses crews that specialise in motion picture production along with the equipment and techniques that follows on from that. One of his series he has done is called ‘Twilight’, which many of the images on the right are from, it consists of 40 photos taken between 1998 and 2002, showing the extent of the scale and time period these photos run through. The ‘Twilight’ series also seems to reference shows such as “The Twilight zone” all of them made up of unnerving and unexplainable scenes.
One style that he has used multiple times, as seen in a couple of the photos on the right, is his dark scenes with gloomy lightning and beams of light striking down into the scene. It adds another layer of unknown, anything could be hiding in the background, but it also creates and aspect of unnatural or inhuman, if something were to be lurking in the darkness, the human brain would most likely assume it to be inhuman, animal, alien or something else, that is what the human brain finds scary. With this darkness, it also allows me to experiment with satisfying beams of light and fog rolling through. Adding this to my 3D modelling creates an extra realm of realism and gloominess that pushes it towards a film scene.
Another part of Crewdson’s meticulous set up for these photos is that he does not want any recognisable scenes, he often uses small towns in America to be unrecognisable to most, creating an extra sense of strangeness. However, the locations are still a very usual site to see, some small towns in America which creates that sense of familiarity that is then destroyed or in some ways makes it scarier with the addition of the unnerving aspects being put into that common and almost relatable scene. This is a technique that is one of the building blocks that he needed to create all of these pieces, along with a lot of other skills in lighting and cinematography (and money).
What I want to create is the sense of false realism, mixing the real (photographs for example) with the surreal and unnatural (using my 3D modelling, and also some 2D work as well). Mixing this sense of what is real and blurring the line of fake is something that I want to explore and experiment with, this itself is something that is becoming distorted in today’s world as well. With the common place of photo editing software and the creation of AI technology like deep-fakes and voice mimicking, the definition of real and fake is something that is incredibly important in this day and age, especially with the prominence of lies and deceit in modern media.
This piece is one of my favourites of his, it symbolises the exact familiarity and surreal-ness that I want to achieve. Using a scene that is familiar but then using lighting, objects and people he created a scene that is incredibly disturbing. Crewdson’s planning and effort that went into this scene is incredibly important, from the position of the car and “groceries”, it really pushes the scene into the unknown. The groceries on the car and fallen over on the side of the road really push the atmosphere of something is very wrong. The car also being parked across the drive, slightly on the grass also really helps push the idea of it being a sudden stop, creating the aura of unknown to the people in the photo as well. Following on from that, the fact that the woman is visibly older than the others it gives the air of her being a mother of them, and something is very wrong. The posture and emotions of the actors/models are also incredibly helpful in making this scene, the straight faces on everybody really give a feeling of nothing being amiss. However, the position and especially the hunched tight posture of the half-naked model really push the idea something is very wrong. The night time lighting with the strong contrast between shadows and highlights really push the idea of gloomy and uneasiness, and that is something that I very strongly want to mimic, I believe the strong contrast in tone from night time photos along with the common fogginess that can boost the effect of lighting (more visible in the other night time shot from Crewdson) is incredibly important to creating that surreal-ness and something I want to use in my own pieces.
