Gregory Crewdson

Over the past three decades, Gregory Crewdson has been fleshing out a portrait of middle America, that America of picket-fence suburbia gazing wide-eyed at the glimmers of a fading dream which has long since faded and wilted. His cinematographically staged photos have gradually pieced together the fragments of a twilight world.

His oeuvre stunningly interweave an autobiographical dimension with the portrait of a gloryless America as the setting for a humanity devoured by muted angst while steeped in despondency and ennui. Wan lights and deserted streets are recurring tropes in his works, which are prepared like movie sets to produce photos that quite astonishingly remain images from nonexistent films.

This exhibition brings together works from the three series created between 2012 and 2022. Envisaged as a trilogy, they offer unique insight into a decade of creation, and reveal the two central axes – intimate and political – of the universe that has posited Gregory Crewdson as one of the major figures of photography. Cathedral of the Pines and An Eclipse of Moths mark a pivotal phase due to the intimacy with which they vibrate, crystallized by the images’ locations, which are deeply connected to the lives of Gregory Crewdson, his romantic and creative partner Juliane Hiam, and their children. This trilogy, remarkably concluded by Eveningside, reveals the major articulations of Gregory crewdson’s art, in a fine oscillation between poetics and politics, between a man’s down-to-earth sensitivity and his piercing grasp of the backwash thudding against a world in the grip of slow brutality.

Following the exhibitions presented at the Gallerie d’Italia/Intesa Sanpaolo (Turin, Italy, 2022), at the Rencontres Photographiques d’Arles (Arles, France, 2023) and at the VB Photography Center (Kuopio, Finland, 2024), the Marubi National Museum of Photography presents the work of this internationally acclaimed photographer.

Jean-Charles Vergne
Curator of the european travelling exhibition