Thoughts on Crewdson

In thinking of my final project, I inevitably end up on a narrative track. This comes from a background in film history and the idea that a single image, if properly executed, can elicit certain expectations and emotions while at the same time asking the viewer to participate in the image and to create meaning for his or herself. On a fundamental level, we don't need expository information to understand the human condition.

I find a lot of my inspiration in Gregory Crewdson's work because it fuses the narrative sentimentalities of cinema with the emotional stillness and subtlety of a single image. Crewdson just exhibited a new project, titled "Sanctuary," in which he photographed the backlots of the legendary Italian film studio Cinecitta in Rome. Federico Fellini, Roberto Rosellini, Sergio Leone and countless other legendary filmmakers utilized these spaces while making amazing films, and many of these sets still live on the Cinecitta grounds, deteriorating with no hope of reconstruction or maintenence. The series (or what I could see of it), which consists of empty set pieces and facades, juxtaposes the solitude of the abandoned spaces with the viewer's imagination of how many stories were created on those grounds in the past.

There is a feeling of grandeur that comes in fictionalizing real events for lack of hard evidence. Just like the layman's romantic perceptions of Hollywood as a factory of dreams, we tend to glorify the production of these great films just as much as the films themselves. In reality, making movies can be hard, unrelenting work; essentially unionized, blue collar manual labor--not unlike construction in certain aspects. For someone who has experience working in film or even understanding the workings of a film set, these pictures serve a secondary purpose. Each of the photos in "Sanctuary" displays a kind of emtpiness and deterioration, and because of this a few of the pictures replicate images of post-war Europe, as if they could be printed in a World War II history book. I find this particularly interesting because they almost suggest that the making of a movie is not unlike going into battle. I could be going out on a limb, but the idea of executing plans and strategies, gathering a team of, in many cases, strangers and bringing them together to achieve a goal through physical taxation and emotional strain seems very much akin to directing a film.

Regardless, Crewdson has an eye for spatial understanding, and it really shows in these works. These images conjure endless stories and histories about a time and place that I, personally, could not have experienced firsthand, and they also serve to remind us that nothing can escape the effects of time.

Here's a link to a handful shots from "Sanctuary:" http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-09-23_gregory-crewdson/#/images/1/