Gregory Crewdson. Retrospective
Summary
TLDRThe speaker reflects on their artistic journey, emphasizing the search for personal truth and beauty in their photography. They explore the blurred lines between reality and fiction, aiming for a timeless, psychological depth in their images. Influenced by their father's psychoanalytic background, the artist delves into human emotions such as longing, sadness, and regret. The photographs are meant to exist in a state of 'in-between,' capturing moments of stillness and revelation, while avoiding contemporary markers to maintain a timeless quality. The exhibition showcases the evolution and consistency of their work over time, revealing an uncanny blend of the familiar and mysterious.
Takeaways
- đ The artist's vision is to capture the beauty of the world in form, detail, light, and atmosphere, reflecting a personal experience and truth.
- đ The artist's photographs are a search for meaning, exploring everyday life to find significance and beauty that can only be hinted at in each image.
- đš The artist aims for a blur between reality and fiction, valuing a personal truth over objective reality in their work.
- đ Influenced by a psychoanalyst father, the artist's work often explores psychological themes of longing, sadness, and regret.
- đ The artist is interested in oppositions and tensions, such as truth vs. fiction, nature vs. artifice, and light vs. darkness.
- đ° The artist's photographs aim to exist outside of time, avoiding contemporary markers to create a timeless feel.
- đ The artist's work plays with the concept of time, focusing on moments of stillness and emptiness that suggest a narrative between before and after.
- đšâđ The exhibition showcases the artist's work from their entire career, reflecting changes and consistencies in their core interests.
- đź The artist is fascinated by the uncanny, finding mystery and beauty in the familiar, and exploring themes of fear and desire.
- đ Despite evolving over time, the artist's work remains constant in its exploration of personal psychological themes and motifs.
- đ The artist's photographs are made in twilight, symbolizing the in-between spaces of light and darkness, beginning and end.
Q & A
What is the photographer's vision of the world in terms of their artwork?
-The photographer envisions the world as beautiful in form, with a focus on detail, light, atmosphere, and weather, reflecting a personal experience in iconography.
What does the photographer describe as the fundamental level of their photographs?
-The photographer describes their photographs as a search for meaning, an attempt to find something significant and beautiful in everyday life.
Why does the photographer believe that any picture can only hint at its exact meaning?
-The photographer believes this because the ultimate meaning is always elusive and requires continuous searching and creating of new pictures to approach.
What is the intended blur in the photographer's pictures?
-The intended blur is between the real and the fiction, reflecting the photographer's interest in something literary, poetic, and cinematic rather than objective documentation.
What is the photographer's stance on objective truth in photography?
-The photographer is not interested in objective truth, instead, they are more interested in expressing personal truth through their photographs.
What types of oppositions and tensions are important in the photographer's work?
-Oppositions and tensions such as truth and fiction, nature and artifice, sadness and beauty, normality and paranormality, and light and darkness are important in the photographer's work.
How does the photographer's father's profession influence their work?
-The photographer's father was a psychoanalyst, which influences the psychological aspects of the subjects in the photographs, often reflecting a sense of longing, sadness, and regret.
What does the photographer aim to achieve with the sense of separation and detachment in their images?
-The photographer aims to create a sense of longing and a psychological image that exists outside of time, disconnected from contemporary life but still reflecting it.
Why does the photographer avoid including contemporary elements like cell phones or cars in their work?
-The photographer wants their pictures to exist in a timeless world, avoiding any elements that would date them to a specific moment in time.
How does the photographer describe the narrative of their pictures?
-The narrative of the pictures is described as suspended between two moments, focusing on stillness, emptiness, and internal revelation rather than literal narrative.
What does the photographer find constant in their work despite changes over time?
-The photographer finds that their core interests and personal themes remain constant, reflecting a psychological sense of fear or desire that is part of who they are.
Outlines
đ The Search for Personal Truth in Photography
The speaker discusses the essence of their photography, emphasizing the reflection of their personal vision of the world. They seek to capture beauty in form, light, and atmosphere, aiming for images that feel true to their experiences. The speaker's work is described as a search for meaning, with each photograph hinting at deeper significance. They express a preference for a blend of reality and fiction, avoiding documentation in favor of a more poetic and cinematic approach. The speaker's father's background in psychoanalysis influences their focus on the psychological aspects of their subjects, often depicting a sense of longing, sadness, and regret. The photographs are intended to exist outside of time, avoiding contemporary markers to achieve a timeless quality.
đž The Narrative of Moments in Stillness
This paragraph delves into the narrative aspect of the speaker's photography, highlighting the suspension of moments between 'before' and 'after.' The speaker is interested in capturing stillness, emptiness, and moments of revelation that are internal rather than literal narrative. The work is described as existing in a twilight zone, between light and darkness, and embodying various oppositions such as beginning and end. The exhibition mentioned spans the speaker's entire career, reflecting changes and consistencies in their work over time. The speaker is intrigued by the uncanny, seeking mystery and beauty in the familiar, and their photographs are deeply personal, reflecting psychological fears and desires. Despite exploring different themes, the core interests and sensibilities remain constant.
Mindmap
Keywords
đĄPersonal Vision
đĄElusive
đĄIconography
đĄNarrative
đĄOppositions and Tensions
đĄPsychoanalyst
đĄUncanny
đĄStillness
đĄTimelessness
đĄTwilight
đĄConsistency
Highlights
The artist seeks to capture a personal vision of the world that is beautiful in form, light, atmosphere, and weather.
The artist's photographs are a search for meaning, exploring everyday life to find significance and beauty.
Every picture hints at meaning but cannot fully express it, necessitating the creation of more images to continue the search.
The artist aims to blur the line between reality and fiction in their work.
The artist is not interested in documentation or objective truth, but rather in a literary, poetic, and cinematic approach.
Photographs cannot express objective reality but can convey a personal truth.
Oppositions and tensions, such as truth vs. fiction and nature vs. artifice, are central to the artist's work.
The artist's father's background in psychoanalysis influences the psychological aspects of the subjects in the photographs.
The subjects in the photographs often convey a sense of longing, sadness, and regret, reflecting human instincts and behaviors.
The artist is interested in creating a psychological image with a sense of separation, detachment, and longing.
The photographs are intended to exist outside of time, without reflecting any specific moment.
The artist avoids including contemporary elements to create a timeless feel in the photographs.
The photographs exist between moments, embodying stillness, emptiness, and internal revelation.
The exhibition showcases work from the artist's entire career, reflecting both change and consistency in their core interests.
The artist's work is very personal, reflecting psychological fears and desires that are part of their identity.
The artist is drawn to the uncanny, finding mystery and beauty in the familiar.
Despite exploring different themes and motifs, the artist's work remains consistent, reflecting a core sensibility.
Transcripts
[Music]
the most important thing is that it
reflects my own sort of particular
vision of the world that they are
beautiful in terms of the form that um
they're feel with detail that there's a
beautiful sense of light and atmosphere
and weather um and that in some way or
another they feel true to my own
personal kind of uh experience in
iconography what I'm looking for is
something very elusive that like if I
knew exactly what I was looking for I
wouldn't have to make the pictures so I
think at some fundamental level my
photographs are about a search for me
meaning about trying to look into
everyday life and try to find something
that feels important and significant and
beautiful but any picture can only hint
at what it is exactly because that's why
you have to make another one you have to
continuing search to try to find the
ultimate meaning which is always outside
of your grasp
[Music]
so in my pictures I hope there's a blur
between the real and the fiction and
that's something that always has
interested me I'm not really interested
in
documentation I'm not interested in
objective truth I'm much more interested
in something literary and poetic and
cinematic and photographic you can't
make a photograph that like actually
expresses an objective reality you can
only make pictures that feel that they
come to your own personal truth
I'm very interested in oppositions and
tensions I really want different levels
of um oppositions to exist to my work so
like truth and fiction this an
interesting one nature and
artifice sadness and
Beauty uh normality and
paranormality light and darkness all of
these tensions are really important to I
think almost every picture I've made my
father was a psychoanalyst in fact he
was uh came from a Freudian background
so it's great that this show is in
Vienna and I always look at um the
psychology of the subjects in the
pictures uh as somewhat connected to my
own that there's um they're usually
searching for something there there's a
sense of sad there's a sense of longing
there's a sense of
regret these are all very human
instincts and um
behaviors and that's part of how my work
plays out um I'm really interested in
the psychological image so there's
always a sense of
separation of Detachment but also
longing
I want the pictures to exist outside of
time they don't really reflect any
moment I want them to feel
like
um familiar but like slightly
disconnected from any sort of
contemporary moment I want them to exist
more in a Timeless world uh so that's
why I don't like put cell phones or
contemporary cars or like anything that
feels like of the moment I want them to
pictures to exist um in a kind of more
disconnected from our everyday life sort
of separated from contemporary life but
also reflects contemporary life at the
same
[Music]
time all of my pictures exist between
before and after so unlike a movie or
literature or any other narrative
form uh a photograph is suspended
between um two moments and that's really
what I'm interested in terms of The
Narrative of the pictures that like
almost nothing is actually happening in
my pictures it's usually a moment of
Stillness uh a moment of emptiness a
moment of revelation of some sort but
it's all internal so there's not a lot
of literal narrative it's
between um the before and the after and
I hope that my pictures kind of reside
in that always even
Twilight um when these pictures are made
it's between light and darkness it's
between before and after it's between
the beginning and the end it's just
always in between those different
oppositions
this um exhibition
has uh work from I guess my
entire uh working
life um all the way back from when I was
in Graduate
School uh so it's amazing to look at the
different bodies of work and think about
like um one's life and how the pictures
change over time but also remain
consistent with my sort of
core um interest from when I was in my
20s and uh so there's a connection to my
life but also a connection to my art and
I feel like the lesson there is that um
you can't really get away from yourself
so I'm very interested in what I would
call The Uncanny is trying to find
Mystery and um and Beauty in um
something that on the surface feels very
familiar to
you the pictures at the core are very
personal that they reflect a kind
of uh
psychological sense of fear or desire
that are part of who I am you always
cirle around similar themes and motifs
and as much as you try to like um push
away from the core interests or the core
sensibility uh it all remains very
constant and some more
[Music]
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