Filled with meticulously constructed photographs that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination, this sumptuously produced retrospective features more than thirty years of work by one of America’s most influential photographers. For more than three decades, Gregory Crewdson has been luring viewers into the worlds of his cinematic, highly detailed, and assiduously crafted photographs. This retrospective catalog features images from nine series that represent a broad chronological spectrum of Crewdson’s oeuvre. Included are selections from Twilight, the eerie and often darkly humorous photographs inspired by Stephen Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Beneath the Roses, which illuminates townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets with unsettling clarity; the black and white images of Sanctuary, shot on location at the legendary Cinecitta` studios on the outskirts of Rome; Cathedral of the Pines, a paean to the beauty and tragedy of a gritty western Massachusetts town; and Eveningside, in which moments of alienation and wonder occur within the confines of quotidian life. With highest quality reproductions, paper changes, and incisive essays by photography expert Walter Moser and other esteemed art historians, this exhibition catalog reveals why Crewdson’s powerful, elegiac and painterly photos draw comparisons to old master painting, staged photography and auteur cinema.
