LCD Concept 2

8 x 10 photo vector as cover for this approach

Leo CinicoloThe work of Gregory Crewdson represents a pinnacle in the ongoing symbiotic relationship between cinema and photography, but can photography ever harbour the narrative and time-based complexities of film?

Dissertation 2010

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Foreword |

However his insightful images are far more complex than first observation might suggest. Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short?

Members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly

unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapmen

Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short?

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However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapmen

Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short? Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short?

Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work

attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short? Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its entrapment in a still world, always fall short?

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Since its advent photography has been made to mimic. Starting with the

statuesque poses of early portraiture and the romantic painterly scenes of the

turn of the century it recycled the rules of classical art, but was often seen

as a poor substitute. However, when the moving image was invented and

became popular, the two art-forms had both a sibling affinity and rivalry. Here

were two ways of image making seated in chemistry. Unlike painting there

was no original. The photograph could be replicated easily and indefinitely.

This led to their immediate adoption by the press, and soon the photograph

overwhelmed any other form of illustration. The relationship between cinema

and photography has been a varied one ever since.

In today’s world of post-modern media Gregory Crewdson’s work walks a

narrow line between photographic originality and cinematic theft. However

his insightful images are far more complex than first observation might

suggest. Famous for his exhibitions of huge prints, and his employment

1Introduction |

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of up to sixty crew members in the creation of a single photograph, he is

certainly unique among the photographic community. However the question

remains, does his work attain the same narrative richness as film or, due to its

entrapment in a still world, always fall short?

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The “ambiguous moment” (Morrow, B. 1997) is how Crewdson describes

that which is at the heart of each of his eerie images; the sense of the uncanny

that has just, or is soon to take place. Through his photographs Crewdson

seems to prove, and relish in doing so, that this moment, this feeling, is

the closest state to a clear narrative it is possible to achieve with a single

photograph.

Is this so? Henri Cartier Bresson, himself a documentary film-maker, before

turning to photography, coined the (now over-used) phrase ‘decisive moment’.

The moment where all elements in the frame converge to form the perfect

explanation of whatever episode he was photographing. However, this notion

itself is floored. The process of photography captures a two dimensional

rendering of what light exists or is placed. That is all. The first distortion

happens the moment the camera is fired, the lens swallows light to record

what it sees; which is not essentially what a witness sees. To try and realise

why Crewdson is so driven in his pursuit of the “perfect…beautiful image”

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BOMB Magazine. 1997. Interview with Gregory Crewdson by Bradford Morrowhttp://www.bombsite.com/issues/61/articles/2090 accessed on October 12th 2009.

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The Ambiguous Moment |

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(Morrow, B. 1997) we must recognise the paradox that he himself creates by

disallowing a linear narrative and by his understanding of Bresson’s theory.

Crewdson’s own problem with the way a still photograph portrays reality

lies within “Narrative and the limitations of photographs” (Page 82. Bright,

S. 2006). Indeed painting, illustration, and photography deal only in the

singular moment. No matter how abstract, there is always a sense of its fixture

existing at the time of creation. His envy of film and literature’s ability to

“Move forward in time” (Page 82. Bright, S. 2006) created a desire to turn

photography’s limitation into a “strength” which would be at the core of his

story-telling. Despite this strength, Crewdson believes all photographs fail,

describing his frustration being caused by photography itself. “Reproduction is

reproduction and will always, one way or another, fail you” (Page 83. Bright, S.

2006).

His fastidious approach means his works are always released as series.

However within these series there is no ongoing narrative, nor clear repetition

of characters. Each image is a separate entity within the context of the other,

with its own morals and questions. In this way it is much like the suburban

community which it represents, each individual character part of a larger

picture. Ultimately each photograph warrants its own existence, its own world.

The linkage of his series lying perhaps only in the location and their surreal

atmosphere.

To view one of Crewdson’s images properly demands it to be of a large scale.

We can peer deep into his scenes and witness what appears to be a world we

recognise, may even live in. But the photographic processes and its inherent

reproduction removes us from this scene, so that, God-like, we watch the most

intimate moments of human existence with the strange removal of immediate

human emotions such as panic and threat. Instead feeling only those emotions

associated with retrospect, those such as loneliness, emptiness, worry and regret

the essentially human emotions that exist outside of our animal instincts.


Page 82. Bright, Susan. 2006. Art Photography Now. London. Thames & Hudson.



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Here is the similarity with cinema. The voyeuristic eye that Crewdson lends

us. The eye that feels so natural. We may float above a neighbourhood, or see

two rooms by cutting through a wall or floor and it is natural. The camera

is a ghost, able to glide through matter. This is a characteristic of the viewers

perspective shared with film, where the camera moves in ways impossible for

human eyes. Crane-shots, zooms, stedi-cams… they are completely un-real and

yet they pass un-noticed as we follow the tale.

Sometimes the film-maker acknowledges this and deliberately disorientates

this comfortable sense to remind us of its existence, but in Crewdson’s work

he uses it so fully that viewers are absorbed unknowingly. Utilising it like no

other photographer.

He describes the nature of his photography in depicting a moment that is

“frozen and mute” (Morrow, B. 1997), yet out of this he gives life artificially.

Like the scenes of a fictional film his photographic tableaux never took place

The Cinematic experience and Crewdson’s interpretation |

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in our world, and this is where he becomes more than a photographer. He is

a director, positioning actors in action. The difference between the cinematic

(and Crewdson’s) production and regular photography being that the whole

scene exists patiently for the photographic record itself. Whereas photography

as a medium is more associated with its ability to freeze a fleeting moment.

By working in this way there enters a deliberate sense of creation, and in

creation exists drama. Influencing the contents of the image Crewdson can

act as any writer or director. Never is this more relevant than in his studio-

sets. Creating a false environment and staging an imagined scene, no matter

how seemingly lacking in action Crewdson cannot help but create drama. The

plot in Crewdson’s image arrives not out of explanation as in cinema, but out

of the unknown.

BOMB Magazine. 1997. Interview with Gregory Crewdson by Bradford Morrowhttp://www.bombsite.com/issues/61/articles/2090 accessed on October 12th 2009.6

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The human psyche has an inherent, and amazing, ability to imagine. In

seeing a photograph or painting it queries what has happened in the lead

up to its depiction and what is about to take place. Sometimes the viewer

enters the scene and empathises with one of the characters, but not always.

Crewdson encourages this. In cinema or literature, taking a single moment

out of context within the entire story changes its meaning to the viewer

completely. With Crewdson this context never existed except afterwards, in

the viewers mind. The narrative is suggested, but is ultimately different with

each person’s study of the work.

In this way the relationship between Crewdson’s work and cinematic

narrative is no-longer symbiotic. Instead Crewdson takes what he needs from

cinema’s extensive and recognisable style to manipulate the viewer. Decades

of an instilled ‘repertoire of elements’ forces the audience to acknowledge

certain techniques, both narrative and technical that exist in the majority of

The Narrative, The Unknown and The Imagined:The Narrative, The Unknown and The Imagined |

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cinematic experiences. To alien eyes Crewdson’s images would be perfectly

real. However, anyone who knows cinema, no matter how little, recognises

the staging of a dream - that dream being the way in which the events can

only be real in the location of the mind. The audience enters the world,

smells the wet grass, feels the tension, hears the silence, but the viewer cannot

touch it and never will. What Crewdson tells them, and maybe wishes to find

himself, is the beauty in the ‘real’ world, the beauty outside of the camera

or the gallery or the pages of his book, the beauty in all moments of life in

the ‘actual’ world. Crewdson can only acknowledge their existence through

striving to mimic them. Hyper-real, only then can the images transcend

culture and language, to give us a visual purity films rarely express in their

need to constantly explain themselves to the viewer.

One film exists which also hinges upon a higher visual language. It is

Koyaanisqatsi, the first in the ‘Qatsi’ trilogy. Unlike Crewdson’s photographs

it records the ‘real’ American world. Slowly seducing the audience with

absolutely beautiful photography and trance-like music it gently forces

them to fall in love with what they see. However ugly or serene, each place

is treated with equal care and attention, and out of this treatment emerges

democracy. Crewdson’s view of photography in regard to other art forms is

that “it is the most democratic insofar as it’s instantly readable and accessible

to our culture.” (Morrow, B. 1997). If this view of the ‘democratic’ nature of

photography and its role in popular culture is true then it explains its success

in areas such as advertising and marketing.

Cnsidering the photograph’s use in marketing, viewers react to a still

advertisement quite differently to a moving one. The repetitive address of

movement and noise in a motion advert can become tedious and irritating.

However a still advert does not demand attention. It simply exists until

found, flicking through the pages of a magazine or walking down the street.

Audiences can ignore or can choose to read its message. Once they do they

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are then free to imagine and conceive the images message in relevance to

themselves.

In the same way as such adverts, Crewdson’s work demands no attention

(except for its poster-like scale). The way it exists is by only catching the

viewers whom wish to study it, who don’t walk past. These people, like

Crewdson, are those who enjoy the beauty in the world, and having found

this audience Crewdson offers them his own.

In Koyaanisqatsi we find a similar sense. Although obviously best viewed

from beginning to end, the freedom of plot or story allows the viewer to

arrive at any point and enjoy the enveloping atmosphere. There is no specific

journey, except a broader message about beauty and consumption. Ironically

in Crewdson’s work one always feels as if one has arrived in the middle of

a complex film knowing nothing about its plot. Both demand our stringent

analysis before their messages or questions begin to be deciphered. We cannot

act as the passive audience many films allow us to become.

Whilst talking about visual theorist Christian Metz’s writing, David

Campany observes that “the photograph belongs inextricably to the past,

while film always seems to unfold in the present tense…” (Page 11. Campany,

D. 2008). This seems to be something that Crewdson is acutely aware of, yet

it can be difficult to see whether he wants his images to utilise their inherited

tense or try and break it. He certainly blurs the lines by questioning our belief

that we are seeing part of an imaginary film.

Take Plate 19 of his “Twilight” series for example (see appendix 1.). This

is one of the most iconic images from that collection. Looking in as witnesses

the viewer immediately feels a sense that the dramatic has passed, giving them

a sense of the past tense. Is the woman dead? Is the shot the view-point of

a human, alive and present to see the main character like this? The subject

matter is not the only un-nerving thing about this image - so too is what it

does to the viewer’s sense of place and helplessness.

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Crewdson grew up the son of a psychoanalyst. Between jobs his father held

discussions with patients in the cellar of their Brooklyn home. Crewdson

admits to “listening through the floor” (Morrow, B. 1997) as a young child

and trying to decipher the complex adult meetings taking place. Surely this

must have had an impact on the young Crewdson? Many critics agree that

his works are a visual representation of different and altered states of mind.

Explorations into the way we ourselves think and process what we believe

to see. Photo-historian and critic Gerry Badger claims with certainty that

Crewdson’s images “present psychological states rather than the real world.”

(Page 35. Badger, G. 2007).

In Plate 19, the more it is studied the more it reveals, almost forensically.

However this process of study forces further questioning. On the coffee table

in the bottom left-hand corner are an empty pill-bottle and a glass of water

(both running motifs in much of his work), which seem to point to suicide or

The Psychoanalyst and Shakespeare |

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drug abuse, either way it certainly represents desperation. The woman lies in

the flooded room, but her slippers watch from the stairs, as if she took them

off before entering the water. This is something of a common phenomenon

witnessed by police at scenes of people who have thrown themselves from

bridges.

Did she die only to be lifted by rising water or was the water there already?

Is she dead at all? Hence the creation of a sense of frustration and then

mystery. The most obvious visual inspiration for this scene is Millais’ Pre-

Raphaelite painting of ‘Ophelia’ (See appendix 2.). Crewdson’s placement

in a suburban setting is typical of his distrustful representation of what

promises to be an area of kindness and safety. Of all his images this seems to

be one of the most cinematic of all, despite its roots in fine-art. Our eyes are

allowed to wander the room, completing the job of close-ups and cut-aways

in a cinematic scene. Perhaps this is because there is something inherently

cinematic in Millais’ work too.

With ‘Ophelia’, Millais presents a classical metaphor of innocence lost.

The freshly picked flowers fall apart in her hand and drift down-stream. The

water-logged dress bellows and twists. Her hands upturned as in classical

paintings of Christ’s stigmata. It is this mix of visceral beauty and other-

worldly morality that gives it such a cinematic quality. The expert realism that

the Pre-Raphaelite’s celebrated in painting is a vision shared with Crewdson;

reproducing his visions in the highest possible quality. His method involves

shooting multiple exposures on a huge 10x8” plate camera before stitching the

images together digitally to rid the scene of any photographic faults. Hence we

see into every shadow and every highlight with a painterly quality; an ability

the camera fails to complete in a single frame.

If we compare the two images side by side we find that they certainly

share an overall ambiance. The heroine lies similarly in both scenes, head

on the left, face up in the dark water. Millais’ is very true to Shakespeare’s

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description of Ophelia’s death in Hamlet. However Crewdson’s image takes

her into modern suburbia. Generating the sense of man-made isolation in the

context of the home rather than Millais’ deep forest.

A major difference is the way in which Crewdson undresses his heroine,

hinting at the changed ideas of the romantic over the past century. Gone are

the ideas of innocence and virginal purity and now Ophelia is a creature of

the night, dressed in a thin chemise that exposes much of her body’s shape.

On the same table as the pills is a paperback novel by prolific American

trash-writer Nora Roberts, and on a shelf overlooking the room is a framed

wedding photograph. Gone is the Shakespearian, this woman is a typical

suburban wife, as mediocre and as insignificant as the next person. The only

unusual and unique part of her existence is the surreal scene Crewdson puts

her in. Physically and mentally drowned in her own home.

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As discussed, Crewdson uses association in Plate 19 to enrich its narrative,

however he also presents the viewer with a broad use of time. A key ingredient

to narrative is of-course tense, but in what tense does Plate 19’s moment exist?

If we bear in mind his psychoanalytical approach, it is possible for it to exist

in all three.

In the past Crewdson depicts the passing of a life, or a precise and

pivotal moment in it. In the present reading the viewer empathises with the

character, imagining themselves as her or trying to help her. In the future lies

a message about the fragility and mortality of all things, including the viewer;

certainly a message that carries through Crewdson’s entire cannon from his

most early works.

Tense and Reality |

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By turning his tableaux, his human sculptures, into photographic prints,

he creates inanimate objects that cannot die or age, like the faces of screen

stars living on celluloid long after their owners’ deaths. The single moment

Crewdson records, or creates, is as immortal as is humanly possible.

Fictitious as those moments in any piece of cinema story-telling, but touching

nonetheless.

This is where the real sadness lies. The woman is an actress, or model. The

minute the shutter is fired she carries on aging, as does everything else, except

the image. To the left and right and outside the windows are lights. The set

is built in a huge studio, and behind a large plate camera stands Crewdson

and his team of up to sixty people. The commanding director. Behind all the

scenes that touch the heart in the greatest films, behind all of Crewdson’s

tender and deeply intimate moments lies falsity. No more real than

performers on an empty stage, despite every effort for their apparent realism.

Whereas the painter can work totally from imagination, there must be

a starting point with any photographic rendition. This is an element that

photography and cinema share, the element of certain visual truths. There

must be a scene to record. It cannot be conjured out of thin air. Therefore can

it ever be total myth? In the creation of the tableaux, is there then a creation

of reality?

It is a beautifully orchestrated piece of fiction. Urging the audience to look

at these people. Not demanding their attention but slowly captivating them

once it has it. Intelligently using semiotics to convey reality, but never letting

the audience become anything other than a spectator. In Staiger’s study of

spectatorship in cinema, she puts forward the idea that “in a representation

the original is never there but always absent, a representation is a referring to

some authentic or original real.” (Page 193. Staiger, J. 2000). The key word

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for Crewdson being “authentic”. There was never an “original” scene such as

that depicted in Crewdson’s. They may be close to reality but all are surreal and

created.

Their “extravagant construction” (Page 33. Campany, D. 2003) causes David

Campany to compare their production properties with that of cinema, describing

them as “concocted”. However the counter-argument to this is that however

“concocted” the cinematic landscape is, the audience is always emotionally

attached despite the artifice. Indeed Staiger’s view of the artifice’s effect on

narrative is that it is put aside by the audience in a “search for a mastery and

coherence of self” (Page 191. Staiger, J. 2000). Therefore, so long as the portrayal

is convincing and based on some “authentic original” it can be expanded and

warped and remain accessible.

The intelligence in Crewdson’s most recent images lies in the extent to which

they are so convincing, engaging and inviting. It is worth at this point looking

at Crewdson’s earlier “Hover” series (See Appendix 3.). In an attempt to escape

himself Crewdson changed technique. One of the switches he made was to shoot

in black and white. Everything changes. There is now a barrier that stops us

entering the scene. Beautiful as it is photographically, gone is the sense of reality.

The landscapes refusal of colour acts as a constant reminder of its falsity. As if a

mask was put over a fully expressive face.

Strangely this is not so with cinema. Black and white films retain the

accessibility that “Hover” lacks, supporting Staiger’s view of realism being

concocted by the audience. The presence of sound and dialogue help the

viewer to enter the representation of reality. The movement of objects through

the frame aids their immersion too. Meanwhile “Hover” stays deadly static.

Somehow even more life-less than Crewdson’s other stills. Perhaps the grey

masses camouflage the action. It certainly exists, but is dulled. Perhaps,

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accidentally, Crewdson had realised a fundamental necessity in his work’s

reading. Colour.

If we study his colour palette we certainly find it to match that of common

colour cinema. Particularly horrors and fantasies set in a muted American

suburbia such as Carpenter’s original “Halloween” or Spielberg’s “Close

Encounters of the Third Kind” or “E.T: The Extra Terrestrial.” Dominated by

blacks, greens and browns it is reliant on the mock-natural world of the city

limits. Add to this the misty far-distance and golden rim-lighting and it is easy

to understand that Crewdson works with Directors of Photography more used

to working in film.

If Crewdson were shooting the same subject in the same place without

such elaborate attention to lighting, his pictures would be much more raw,

more drably realistic like the location work of, say, Jeff Wall. However with

these techniques his worlds become lush and inviting. Anyone who has

witnessed modern cinema understands the visceral quality it can achieve. It

is in this sense that Crewdson’s photography and the cinematic experience

are most alike. As if his images were plucked from a reel of 35mm projection

transparency and printed as a single bizarre frame.

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However technically alike still and moving photography are, the question

remains, can a single image achieve a fully functional narrative? If we look

into Crewdson’s latest work, “Beneath the Roses” we find more use of

symbolism and props to create depth than ever before. Taking Plate 21 from

the series as an example (See Appendix 4.), we see a snow-covered street scene

in Middle America. Relatively distant on the right is a cinema. The letters of

the sign read “Brief Encounter”. If we assume (quite safely given its cinema

showing) that he means the 1945 film by David Lean and not the television

series then it opens a small window into Crewdson’s personal taste.

The David Lean film concerns a chance meeting between a man and a

woman in a railway station. During the course of the film the possibility for

the couple to cheat on their spouses arises, and through the negotiation of

this moral dilemma the film unfolds. It deals with themes of guilt, duty, self-

control and selfishness. All themes that arise throughout Crewdson’s work.

Homage |

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Underneath the cinema sign in Crewdson’s image stands an elderly man,

a man from the same generation as the film. He is lit by the cinema lights

and stands alone in a golden pool in an image dominated by the steely-blue

of twilight snow. It is as if Crewdson is visually beckoning our attention to

this man. Raising the importance of his placement as if to imply a solidarity

between his personal life and the issues of the film. As with his Ophelia,

Crewdson is using association to enrich the viewing experience.

In essence all of Crewdson’s works focus on ‘brief encounters’. That is

their narrative. Without knowing any beginning or end we are left achingly

ignorant. However this is the point. There is no story, only questions. He

asks the viewer not to look at what his characters are doing but asks them

to decide what they want them to be doing. Knowing all they know of them

from a single moment they must rely on their own mental archive to construct

any story. Like Laura and Alec, the main characters in Lean’s film, they are

being forced to make decisions based on a minute period, they are asked to

fall in love or be repulsed on little more than an aesthetic façade.

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As discussed, Crewdson’s inspiration does not derive simply from cinema.

We surely cannot look long at his photographs before we are reminded of the

paintings of Edward Hopper, another artist obsessed with the bleak isolation

of suburbia, and the hole in the ‘American Dream’. Indeed if Hopper

painted his version of Ophelia it would probably bear huge resemblance to

Crewdson’s ‘lady in the flooded house’.

However a more bizarre influence he cites in interview with his friend

and critic Bradford Morrow is Duchamp’s final work, “Etant Donnes” (See

Appendix 5. & 6.). He goes so far as to describe it as being “Absolutely” the

“most important visual influence” (Morrow, B. 1997) in his mind when

approaching his projects.

“Etant Donnes” was created in total secrecy by Duchamp after the world

thought he had left art behind to play professional chess. It is an installation

piece that consists of a false wooden board door in which there are two holes,

Fine Art |

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eye distance apart. By looking through these holes there is seen the entrance

of a cave from within, looking out over a vast river valley. In the grass at the

threshold of the cave lies a naked woman holding up a lamp. It is a romantic

picturesque scene, however by way of controlling the peep-holes Duchamp

prevents the ‘peeper’ from seeing the face of the woman. It is of course a three

dimensional diorama, a representation of reality, but ultimately, a set.

Crewdson uses the camera in the same way as Duchamp’s peep holes.

Creating a private living sculpture, a tableaux, then photographing it so that it

is fixed. Able only to be viewed as he intended. In sculpture this is rare, but in

cinema it is the norm. As much as the viewer would like to they can never walk

into the scene and observe the characters in situ.

This imbues Duchamp’s work with something that is intrinsically

‘photographic’. Raymond Bellour cites the essence of the ‘photographic’

so concisely and appropriately when he describes it as being, “a state of

“inbetween-ness”: in movement, it is that which interrupts, that paralyzes.”

(Page 253. Beckman, K & Ma, J. 2008). What Duchamp had done was remove

the camera, he had created the purest example of a photographic moment,

like Plato’s cave or the earliest camera obscura. The only lens involved was the

viewers eye, and so gone is Crewdson’s “failure of reproduction”.

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There is a film that crosses the boundaries between a photo-essay

and a complete cinematic experience. That film is “La Jetée” the

French art film from the Sixties by Chris Marker. At thirty-three

minutes it is comprised almost entirely of still photographs, edited

together linearly, and to a soundtrack to make an entire film. There

is one snippet of moving image, brought more to life by its placement

among so many stills. It borrows not only from cinema and

photography, but also from the written word and the graphic novel.

Reading, perhaps, most like the latter.

Marker’s film was a revolutionary piece. It is arguable whether

Crewdson’s work is. However, instead of making a film out of many

single photographs like Marker, is Crewdson compressing a film-

worthy narrative into an image, or series of images? It would perhaps

only be possible if we accept that it is not a simply linear narrative. It

Turning the single event into a story |

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is organic and transcendental, conceived in the image but brought to maturity

through a collective reading by its audience. Then being almost infinitely

varied and complex.

Characters are not repeated from picture to picture, neither are locations

as they are in “La Jetée”. However we are allowed to observe an entire

community. That is the traceable, the constant, in Crewdson’s work. He never

takes us outside, to foreign lands. All he creates exists in one microcosm of

the world. A microcosm that looks like Mid-America.

It does not matter that many of the viewers are not from this region. Can

they not still relate to every depiction of human life? Those personal moments

which take place everyday, around the world. Perhaps not so surreal as

Crewdson’s, perhaps more surreal.

In “La Jetée” Marker challenges our concept of time, and memory, tapping

into the deepest truths of what it means to be human. To be able to consider

our own existence and morality; that which separates us from the animal

kingdom. It is this humanity that Crewdson is essentially interested in

representing, despite his sometimes animalistic depictions of man.

The way Crewdson’s photographs differ from Marker’s is in their critical

distance. Crewdson’s images always contain the whole or nearly whole

person. There is no close-up. That is created when the print absorbs its viewer

and its sheer scale allows them to study the details of the image. However the

image never gives a ‘human’ view-point either. Marker’s photography is far

more expressive emotionally, and directive to the viewers’ reading.

Having discussed Crewdson’s democracy we see, in part, that it is achieved

out of the simplest photographic rules. Firstly the camera is always level. It

never looks up or down in perspective. The camera may be low or high above

a scene, but it never tilts, it focuses flatly on the vanishing point. Secondly no

characters’ body leaves the frame. His models are viewable in their entirety,

except when blocked by structure. These may seem strangely stringent,

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however they give his series a kinship that is very important to their success.

In cinematic terms, Crewdson’s would be labelled as ‘establishing’ and

‘mid’ shots. Their role in cinema being to allow the audience to study the

locations and details of an entire scene before going into the close-ups

designed to absorb the viewer. Crewdson hasn’t given us close-ups since his

most early works. His latest works live entirely within the ‘wider’ perspectives.

Marker’s works take their rules from those formed in the films of Thirties

Expressionism (See Appendix 7.). The importance of angle, perspective,

focal-length and lighting to form drama are key to his work and bear more

resemblance to the style of photographer Cindy Sherman’s series “film stills”

in which she created a post-modern parody of the ease with which one can

mimic cinema’s essence and symbolism in the still image (see Appendix 8.).

Sherman’s debut into the photographic arts world, the “Film Stills”

series has since been recognised as a very powerful moment in the female

photographer’s importance. The series, which consists of a series of self-

portraits of Cindy in movie-like scenarios, is certainly comparable to the

work of Crewdson. Spanning differing genres and exploring the recognisably

distinct style that the “cinematic” employs.

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‘

10

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The remaining question seems to be what essentially differentiates the

‘cinematic’ and the ‘photographic’? Is it time and movement or is it more

than that? They both seem to be frustratingly intangible concepts and yet they

are digested on a twenty-four hour basis around the world; as much a part of

modern life as eating and breathing.

In his essay accompanying Crewdson’s latest book “Beneath the Roses”,

Russell Banks compares the photographs of that series to the “glossy

stills” posted in cinema lobbies to announce forth-coming features (Page

6. Crewdson, G. 2008). Celebrating their ability to allow individual

interpretation. “Movie going is essentially a passive experience… we check our

imaginations at the door.” (Page 6. Crewdson, G. 2008). This may be a little

sweeping considering some of the broader cinematic texts explored in this

The essential ‘cinematic’ and the ‘photographic’ | Are they one?

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essay, however it is true for a large part of ‘conventional’ cinema.

Banks describes the way that audiences cannot “plug in” their “pasts…

fantasies and denials” when engaged with a film. In this way the photograph

has an ambiguity that may be advantageous or hindering. Whichever, it allows

the viewer to ‘read’ the photograph at their own pace as “in complete control

of our rate of perception we read a novel.” (Page 6. Crewdson, G. 2008).

Although artists such as Marker or Duchamp play with this notion it

remains a truth that photographs remain instantaneous. They are accessible

at a glance or a prolonged study. They can be carried in a pocket or hung in a

gallery, and essentially they imprint themselves on the mind.

The ‘cinematic’ experience is more commonly based on the theatrical.

A viewing that lasts for a fixed duration. Whereas the ‘human’ experience

exists always and forever in the present. This may explain why Campany’s

observation that photographs exist “inextricably to the past” (Page 11.

Campany, D. 2008) is what makes them so accessible to our formation of

memory. When remembering a film the human brain edits together critical

moments. Whereas with music, a piece can be remembered in its entirety,

visually the brain compresses memories and visions into hybridised pictures,

butchered out of the present narrative in which they once existed. This

inescapable process favours the still image for sheer permanence of memory.

It speaks out with a clear message in a visual language, and Crewdson is as

fluent in this language as is possible.

When asked the plot of a film an audience member will recite a

chronological rendition of what they, and everyone else in the screening-

theatre witnessed. Crewdon’s images however contain a deceptively simple

façade, which, like one-way glass allows the viewer to look into a world, and at

the same time, see themselves reflected back. Any sort of narrative or morality

is brought from Crewdson’s mind, the physical presence of the image, and the

viewer.

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Bradford Morrow told Crewdson he found his work “Aesopian” (Morrow,

B. 1997) as in from Aesope’s fables. They explore morals and states relevant

to the entire human race; tenderness, madness, fragility. There are certainly

films existing which are just as successful in their portrayal of these subjects.

However the stillness and gravitas Crewdson imparts in a snap-shot works

outside of narrative. It is distilled into a blend of those states, apart from

time. That is the essentially ‘photographic’.

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11

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Although much has been written about Crewdson’s artistic merit, little

has been explored regarding his work’s narrative ability, which is arguably its

most revolutionary feature. It arises out of his chosen medium. Photography.

Which remains unique today, as a means to capture existence, to prove and to

falsify. Photographs have put people in jail and they have shown us the edges

of our universe. Yet they can be as malleable and open-ended as the written

word.

Given birth out of science and life out of art, photography and cinema

remain inseparable and always will. They are part of a family, a sub-species

of art, fused in the same way as painting and illustration, sculpture and

installation. Both have moved independently of one-another for decades,

however in the sharing of simple rules and foundations there is an

unbreakable bond.

In its most simple analysis we separate photography and cinema into still

Conclusion |

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and moving pictures. However it cannot be this simple. After-all is cinema

not simply twenty-five still images a second, an illusion of movement, but

ultimately a freezing of life as paralyzed as the still? Crewdson sheds the

illusion from this fact, as if going through a film reel with a pair of scissors

looking for his “ambiguous moment.”

However what he is really doing is creating a new illusion. Of movement

and time and place and story. This illusion steals from cinema, but also

from literature, from painting… from real life. To one viewer Crewdson’s

photograph is a man by a car in the rain (See Appendix 9.), but to another

(or indeed that same viewer on a different day) it is the very embodiment of

fragility and the physicality of the human experience, which is ultimately how

great art communicates. It instils the same feeling as finishing a great novel

and considering the world changed for the new knowledge gained.

There is no reason to state that Crewdson is above all other photographers

in depth of meaning, because he is not. Many achieve what he has with

photography. However few do it with the presence and originality of

Crewdson. Few invest the time and effort he does. When talking about the

paradox his works contain he describes how the process “between failure and

compulsion to make something perfect creates anxiety.” (Morrow, B. 1997).

Despite his colossal attempts to control light, figure and nature he recognises

that the failure to do so is the biggest moral lesson he can bring to the viewer.

It is this endless search that is addictive.

Susan Sontag, leading theorist and once partner of another great image-

maker Annie Leibovitz, once wrote that “all art aspires to the condition of

photography” (Page 149. Susan, S. 1971), the “condition” seeming to have

existed long before the technical process. As a formation of memories, a

passing on of myth the ‘photographic’ is a state devoid of time, but upon

which time has the utmost relevance. In its fix its meaning changes with time.

Take the infamous portrait of Che Guevara, a once simple snapshot that

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came to be an icon, a symbol recognisable around the world, and in another

hundred years another historical figure whose presence will have been lost

with passing generations.

Crewdson’s work is obsessed with the ‘in-between-ness’ that the ‘ambiguous

moment’ possesses completely. An almost literal personification of what

the ‘photographic’ is. The work relies not on icon, but on mystery. If ever

the mystery ends, if ever the narrative opened by the stillness of his image is

closed, then all appetite for what draws us in is gone.

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Books |

Campany, David. 2008. Photography and Cinema (Exposures). London. Reakton Books Ltd.

Campany, David. 2003. Art and Photography. London. Phaidon Press Ltd.

Elsaesser, Thomas & Buckland, Warren. 2002. Studying Contemporary American Film, (A Guide to Movie Analysis). London. Arnold.

Kaplan, E Ann. 1990. Psychoanalysis & Cinema. London. Routledge.

Staiger, Janet. 2000. Perverse Spectators (The Practices of Film Reception). New York and London. New York University Press.

Bright, Susan. 2006. Art Photography Now. London. Thames & Hudson.

Badger, Gerry. 2007. The Genius of Photography (How Photography Has Changed Our Lives). 3rd Edition 2008. London. Quadrille Publishing ltd.

Cantz, Hatje. 2005. Gregory Crewdson (1985 - 2005). Ostfildern (Germany). Hatje Cantz verlag.

Crewdson, Gregory. 2002. Twilight. New York. Harry N Abrams, Inc.

Crewdson, Gregory. 2008. Beneath the Roses. New York. Harry N Abrams, Inc.

Beckman, Karen & Ma, Jean (editors). 2008. Still Moving (Between Cinema and Photography). U.S.A. Duke University Press.

Sontag, Susan. 1971. On Photography. London. Penguin.

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Films |

Koyaanisqatsi. 1983. Dir. Reggio, Godrey. Metro Goldwyn Meyer.

Brief Encounter. 1945. Dir. Lean, David. Pinewood.

La Jetée (The Pier). 1962. Dir. Marker, Chris. Argos Films.

Halloween. 1978. Dir. Carpenter, J. Compass International Pictures.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 1977. Dir. Spielberg, S. Columbia Pictures.

E.T (The Extra Terrestrial). 1982. Dir. Spielberg, S. Universal.

Websites:

Websites |

BOMB Magazine. 1997. Interview with Gregory Crewdson by Bradford Morrow

http://www.bombsite.com/issues/61/articles/2090 accessed on October 12th 2009.

Bibliography

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Plate 19 from “Twilight”

series

Gregory Crewdson |

2002.

A p p e n d i x

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“Ophelia”. John Everett

Millais | 1852

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Untitled from “Hover”

series

Gregory Crewdson |

1996.

Plate 21 from “Beneath the Roses” series

Gregory Crewdson | 2008.

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“Etant Donnes” view from

‘peep’ holes

Marcel Duchamp |

1966.

“Etant Donnes” installation.

Marcel Duchamp | 1966.

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Still from “La Jetee” Chris Marker | 1962.

“Untitled Film Still No.21”

Cindy Sherman | 1978.

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Plate 14 from “Beneath the Roses” series

Gregory Crewdson | 2008.

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The blurb can go on the back,

it may not even be required, but it

deoes give me a chance to put sp,e

more type down.

Besides I can get someone from

upstaris to crit it maybe, just a

thought.

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