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Lot Essay
This photograph is equal parts everyday and extraordinary, a particularly arresting blend that has marked Gregory Crewdson's work since the mid-1980s. Some elements of the scene, shot in Lee, Massachusetts, are quotidian, even banal-the similarly-shaped homes, the mailboxes that front the lawns, the rusty station wagon. Yet the car's back seat is crammed with board games, its roof is topped by a pile of bright plastic toys, and-in the picture's most unsettling element-a man stands motionless as a house burns, a gas can not far away. Perhaps this is his home, and he has set the fire, or perhaps he has recently arrived on the scene. Maybe the overstuffed vehicle was loaded up in advance of the flames, and the family is departing, or maybe the car has just entered the picture.
Although they often appear to capture the momentary or the accidental, Crewdson's large-scale suburban tableaux are in fact meticulously staged. He works with a production crew that includes actors, lighting designers, and cinematographers, often spending several weeks on a single image. Early work by the artist was shot from sets constructed in his studio, but Crewdson now immerses himself in the communities that he documents. His domestic images are often influenced by science fiction and horror films, and like the work of directors who have influenced him, his art straddles the boundary between truth and fiction, always flirting with the limits of believability.
Although the photographer's formal rigor and technical proficiency earns our trust in his images, veracity is always punctured by incongruous or unsettling details, such as a fire with an inexplicable cause and effect. Crewdson's realism has surreal contours, and the narratives he sets in motion feature impenetrable characters and mysterious trajectories. His vibrantly saturated colors and minute detail commands our attention, yet we sense darker motivations lurking below the surface, terror underneath scenes of tranquil suburbia and normal domesticity.
normal domesticity.
Although they often appear to capture the momentary or the accidental, Crewdson's large-scale suburban tableaux are in fact meticulously staged. He works with a production crew that includes actors, lighting designers, and cinematographers, often spending several weeks on a single image. Early work by the artist was shot from sets constructed in his studio, but Crewdson now immerses himself in the communities that he documents. His domestic images are often influenced by science fiction and horror films, and like the work of directors who have influenced him, his art straddles the boundary between truth and fiction, always flirting with the limits of believability.
Although the photographer's formal rigor and technical proficiency earns our trust in his images, veracity is always punctured by incongruous or unsettling details, such as a fire with an inexplicable cause and effect. Crewdson's realism has surreal contours, and the narratives he sets in motion feature impenetrable characters and mysterious trajectories. His vibrantly saturated colors and minute detail commands our attention, yet we sense darker motivations lurking below the surface, terror underneath scenes of tranquil suburbia and normal domesticity.
normal domesticity.