Gregory Crewdson
We've always been fascinated by beginnings; where did we come from, who made us, how did we get here, what does it mean... And we love thinking about how things start and how they become what they are and will be. Even looking back at our own beginnings it's hard to see exactly what made us into the person we are today, but we can see glimpses of them in the way we dressed or what we studied at school or where we used to go on holiday. That's why we love this video on Nowness by documentary director Ben Shapiro about photographer Gregory Crewdson. It stops enigmatically just as Crewdson begins working on the kinds of photographs that he is known for today - cinematic, large-scale panoramas of suburban American life. This little clip from the longer documentary, entitled Brief Encounters, is maybe all the more powerful because of that. All you can see are his beginnings; a holiday house in Massachusetts, a psychoanalyst for a father and two little kids with foppish blonde hair.
We love Gregory Crewdson's work and we have all of his books. There's something very eerie and dramatic about what he sees. We loved seeing him work in the clip - watching him taking the photos from way up high in the cherry picker was poetic. There is a power and also a sense of creative urgency from placing yourself at such a high vantage point. We want to see more from this documentary - hopefully it gets released in cinemas here! Check out the short clip, beginnings, here.