Gregory Crewdson

Crewdson in 2007

Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dewey High School.

As a teenager, he was part of a power pop group called The Speedies that hit the New York scene. Their song, "Let Me Take Your Photo" proved to be prophetic to Crewdson's future career. In 2005, Hewlett-Packard used the song in advertisements to promote its digital cameras.

At Purchase College, State University of New York, he enrolled in a Photo 101 class taught by Laurie Simmons to impress a crush,[3] and fell in love with the medium. He went on to study with Jan Groover[4] before graduating. He then received his MFA in Photography at the Yale School of Art.[5]

Crewdson is professor and director of graduate studies in Photography at Yale School of Art.[6]

In 2012, he was the subject of the feature documentary film Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters.[7] The film series followed the construction and the behind-the-scenes explanation from Crewdson himself of his thought process and vision for his pieces of his collection Beneath the Roses.

He is represented by Gagosian Gallery.[8]

Untitled photo from Crewdson's series Beneath the Roses (2003–2005)

Crewdson's photographs are elaborately staged and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production and lighting large scenes using motion picture film equipment and techniques.[9] Using shots that resemble film productions, Crewdson deconstructs American suburban life in his work.[10] He has cited the films Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe as having influenced his style,[11] as well as the painter Edward Hopper[12] and photographer Diane Arbus.[13]

Crewdson's most widely-known bodies of work include Twilight (1998–2002), Beneath the Roses (2003–2008), Cathedral of the Pines (2013–2014) and An Eclipse of Moths.[14] He works much like a director with a budget similar to that of a small movie production,[15] each image involves dozens of people and weeks to months of planning.[16]

Crewdson's only body of work made outside of the U.S. was Sanctuary (2009), set at the abandoned Cinecittá studios outside of Rome.[17] Nearly all of his other work before and since was made in the small towns and cities in Western Massachusetts.[18]

He has two children, Lily and Walker, with his ex-wife Ivy Shapiro.[19]

• Hover. Artspace Books, 1995. ISBN 1891273000.
• Twilight: Photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Harry N. Abrams, 2002. ISBN 0810910039. With an essay by Rick Moody.
• Gregory Crewdson: 1985–2005. Hatje Cantz, 2005. ISBN 377571622X.
• Gregory Crewdson: Fireflies. Skarstedt Fine Art, 2007. ISBN 0970909055.
• Beneath the Roses. With Russell Banks. Harry N. Abrams, 2008. ISBN 978-0810993808.
• Sanctuary. With Anthony O. Scott. Hatje Cantz, 2010. ISBN 978-3775727341.
• In a Lonely Place. Hatje Cantz, 2011. ISBN 978-3775731362.
• Gregory Crewdson. New York: Rizzoli, 2013. ISBN 978-0847840915.
• Cathedral of the Pines. New York: Aperture, 2016. ISBN 978-1-597113-50-2. With a text by Alexander Nemerov.

• Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1988
• BlumHelman Warehouse, New York; and traveled to Portland School of Art, Portland, Maine; Ruth Bloom Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 1991
• Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX, 1992
• Feigen Gallery, Chicago, IL, 1993
• Palm Beach Community College Museum of Art, Palm Beach, FL, 1994
• Galleri Charlotte Lund, Stockholm, Sweden, 1995
• Les Images du Plaisir, Frac des Pays de la Loire, Galerie des Carmes, La Flèche, France, 1995
• Jay Jopling / White Cube, London, 1995
• Ginza Artspace, Shiseido Co., Tokyo, 1996
• Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH, 1997
• Espacio Uno, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, 1998; and traveled to Salamanca, 1999
• Rudofinium Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic, 2008
• Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny realities, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2010–2011
• Kulturhuset, Stockholm, Sweden, 2011
• Gregory Crewdson: In a Lonely Place, C/O Berlin, Berlin, 2011; and traveled to Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2011/2012)[20][21]
• Cathedral of the Pines, Gagosian Gallery, New York, NY, 2016;[22] The Photographers' Gallery, London, 2017.[23]
• The Becket Pictures, FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France, 2017.
• Gregory Crewdson: Eveningside, Gallerie d’Italia, Turin, Italy, October 12, 2022–January 22, 2023

https://gallerieditalia.com/it/torino/mostre-e-iniziative/mostre/2022/10/12/gregory-crewdson-eveningside-en/

• Skowhegan Medal for Photography[24]
• National Endowment for the Arts fellowship[25]

Crewdson's work is held in the following permanent collections:

• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: 7 prints (as of 14 January 2023)[26]
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York: 3 prints (as of 14 January 2023)[27]
• Whitney Museum, New York: 18 prints (as of 14 January 2023)[28]