Tableaux

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Gregory Crewdson’s images belong to the postmodern (or pictures generation) era. He references cinema, classical painting, literature, theatricality and film within each image. Crewdson’s technique involves using a large format camera, performing actors and taking several exposures layered together to create an exaggerated drama which triggers the viewer’s emotion. Lighting rigs, props, artificial rain and dry ice add a cinematic quality to the image. The images suspend time and use contemporary and mundane situations packed with hidden social references.  Crewdson asks the viewer to speculate on the outcome, enabling the viewer to look at the image for longer than they would normally look at an image or film frame.

Twilight- book published (2002) exhibited at the V&A (2006).

“I have always been fascinated by the poetic condition of twilight. By its transformation quality. Its power of turning the ordinary into something magical and other worldly. My wish is for the narrative in the pictures to work within that circumstance. It is the sense of in-between-ness that interests me. (Gregory Crewdson, 2006)

“All the images propose twilight as a poetic condition. It is a metaphor for, and backdrops to, uncanny events that momentarily transport actors from the homeliness and security of their suburban context.” (V&A, 2006)

I am intrigued by the possibility of photographing in the twilight. It could work for my set of images. Whilst I haven’t done tableaux photography, I can see that adding an actor into the image could really illustrate a point the artist is trying to make. This is a genre which I would not dismiss now.

References
V&A (2019) Photographs by Gregory Crewdson, available at: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/p/gregory-crewson/ last accessed 20/5/19

Bibliography
Gerrie, Vanessa (2014) “Cinematographic”: an exploration into the photographic tableaux of Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewdson [Ba dissertation] at: https://www.academia.edu/33445845/CINEMATOGRAPHIC_AN_EXPLORATION_INTO_THE_PHOTOGRAPHIC_TABLEAUX_OF_JEFF_WALL_AND_GREGORY_CREWDSON last accessed 20/5/2019

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