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2/6/2006

Gregory Crewdson

Fotomuseum Winterthur, Winterthur

Photographs 1985-2005

The Fotomuseum Winterthur presents a comprehensive overview of the bewitchingly beautiful but also disquieting oeuvre of the American photographer Gregory Crewdson (born in New York in 1962). All his important series are presented in the exhibition, including the recently completed "Beneath the Roses" made between 2003 and 2005.

Crewdson has dealt with the neuroses, fears, and secret desires of a society looking into the abyss of its own psyche since the mid-1980s. His images are set in suburban America and refer directly to the myths of Hollywood movies. The intricate and perfectly beautyful staged photographs were shot with the help of a large crew after weeks of extensive preparation on film-like studio sets or on location.

Himself an influential teacher at Yale University, Crewdson's precise and realistic descriptions of rural America were influenced by the documentary style established by American photographers such as Walker Evans and William Eggleston. But with his use of theatrical lighting, employment of fantastic and enchanted elements and belief in a broad narrative style, he further developed the tradition of staged photography, which - since Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall at the very latest - has become one of the most important means of expression in contemporary photography.

The exhibition starts with the "Early Work" that Crewdson made as a graduate student from 1986 to 1988. The second group, "Natural Wonder" from 1992 to 1997, reflects Crewdson's fascination with nature as a magical mythical zone full of mystifying events. The third part is devoted to the programmatic series "Twilight" (1998-2002) with which Crewdson achieved international recognition. Here, the puzzling and dark energies of an untamable nature arrive in the living room: a tired, perspiring woman smeared with soil sits in her living room, which is entirely taken up by the flowerbed that she obviously just laid out herself. A boy is seen reaching into the drain of a shower, groping into the underground with his arm looking like an extremity separated from the rest of his body. Crewdson stages the act of establishing contact with the unconscious and the repressed.

In "Hover", as well as in the later groups "Twilight" (1998-2002), "Dream House" (2002), and "Beneath the Roses", 2003-2005, the artist worked more like a film director than a photographer. Every motif required a large crew and extravagant production conditions similar to those on a film set. Artistically and technically, Crewdson has reached new heights in his most recent series, "Beneath the Roses": entire streets were blocked off and empty houses were burned down (naturally with the appropriate permission of the local authorities). Up to 150 persons were involved in the production, including specialists for aerial photography and special effects, casting agents, crane operators, hair stylists and make-up artists. Even computer graphics specialists took part.

Crewdson deliberately utilised extensive digital composing technologies for the first time in "Beneath the Roses" to give it its typical hyper-realistic clarity, incredible depth and focused details.

Main sponsor of the exhibition: UBS AG

Publication on the exhibition:
"Gregory Crewdson - 1985-2005". English/German. Ed. Stephan Berg, published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, with texts by Stephan Berg, Martin Hochleitner and Katy Siegel. 248 pages, 131 colour photographs, format 30.3 x 26 cm, hardcover.
Exhibition price: CHF 59.- (in bookshops CHF 75.-)


Stories, Histories"
Set 3 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur
until 5 November 2006

With the artists:
Dennis Adams | Lewis Baltz | Lee Friedlander | Paul Graham | Andreas Gursky | Takashi Homma | Zbigniew Libera | Re'my Markowitsch | Boris Mikhailov | Gilles Peress | Allan Sekula | Bruno Serralongue | Fazal Sheikh | Joel Sternfeld | Bertien van Manen | Lidwien van de Ven | Stephen Wilks

There is much talk of a crisis in photojournalism resulting from the drop in subjective, personal photo essays in magazines and the dominance of television with its ability to provide information rapidly. This forces narrative, in-depth documentary photography to search for new directions in order to make up for the loss of outlets for publication and to be able to assert its own authorship in new and other media, and with different financing. In addition, in recent years a noticeable shift has taken place that embeds the photographic document in other contexts: on the one hand in advertising and fashion (because a nearness to reality was sought in these fields), and on the other hand in art to enable the photographic document to become detached from current events and their speedy distribution and be presented in books and exhibitions with a distinctly slower rate of perception and a conceptual approach. The photographer-authors presented in the exhibition "Set 3" are in this sense no longer classic photojournalists. They do not work for newspapers or magazines, nor do they search for iconic images of individuals that mutate today into classics at auctions. It is much more the case that some of them have developed an approach to narrative photography that enables them to elude the pressures of usability-oriented marketing in magazines and newspapers. With the loss of traditional outlets of distribution for photography in recent years, it is worthwhile considering what conclusions and inferences can be drawn for future methods for producing and distributing documentary photography.

Artists and photographers who are active today, such as Takashi Homma, Stephen Wilks and Andreas Gurksy turn to other methods and approaches that were already being practised in the 1970s and 1980s by such well-known figures as Lee Friedlander, Joel Sternfeld and Lewis Baltz. With a socially motivated eye, conceptual tools and a feeling for the unpredictable, these photographers each took a small segment of American culture and made it into their subject. Images that have already been reproduced are the starting point for the photographic works of Re'my Markowitschs and Dennis Adams. For one it was the printed book, for the other the coverage of the abduction of Patricia Hearst in national and international daily newspapers, which served as the source and inspiration for their particular artistic works. While Markowitsch addresses the ethnographic travels of the French cultural philosopher Claude Le'vi-Strauss forty years later and further interprets them through exposing overlaying images, Adams brings the incompetence and the reluctance of the reporting press to the fore in order to draw a clearly outlined image of the stunning daughter of the American publisher. Zbigniew Libera's "Positives" series (2002-2003) closes the circle that began with the reference to the iconifying of reportage images. With the tactics of a guerrilla fighter, the Poland-born artist appropriates photojournalistic classics that for decades have been fixed in the canon of the western writing of photographic history, and "over-writes" their sad, negative meaning with precisely opposing, namely positive signs.

The diversity of media in new photographic methods of narration and documentation can already be identified in this concise selection. The position of each artist is explained by differentiated motivations and approaches. For photographers doing documentary work, one of the primary tasks is to formulate these basic parameters for their own work and to link them to the ethical, moral and political content that they would like to transport.

We are grateful to the Ars Rhenia Stiftung for its support.

Publication: "Stories, Histories - Set 3 from the Collection of the Fotomuseum Winterthur", collection brochure with works from the exhibition. Essay by Thomas Seelig, German / English. Price Fr. 5.-

Presse Kontakt im Fotomuseum Winterthur: Therese Seeholzer, seeholzer@fotomuseum.ch Tel. +41 (0) 52 2341063, Fax +41 (0) 52 2336097

Image: Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, aus der Serie, Beneath the Roses, 2003-2005 Digitaler C-Print, 144,8 x 223,5 cm Courtesy Luhring Augustine, New York (c) Gregory Crewdson


Fotomuseum Winterthur
Gruzenstrasse 44+45 , CH-8400 Winterthur (Zurich)
Tue-Sun 11am - 6pm, Wed 11am - 8pm

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