GREGORY CREWDSON : BRIEF ENCOUNTERS

Brooklyn native ex-punk rocker turned photographer Gregory Crewdson is something of an enigma. Over a period of some six years he produced a whole body of work called ‘Beneath The Roses’ which were large scale photographs of meticulously designed scenarios that he had set up as full-blown movie sets. In this fascinating documentary by filmmaker Ben Shapiro (‘Paul Goodman Changed My Life’) we follow the progress of many of these pieces from conception to realisation, and its all rather intriguing to say the least.

Crewdson works are an extension of himself as a person i.e. completely surreal, and as his large team go about their tasks he acts less like an artist, and more like a producer and ringmaster as he painstakingly micro-manages very detail of the set-up to the finished ‘art’. He is accompanied by a Production Designer and Director of Photography and a substantial-sized crew that probably exceeds the budget of most Indie Movies, and all for his one photograph. His nit-picking obsessiveness about everything can either be excused as his right as the ‘artist’ or, as I was beginning to suspect, dismissed as just another trait of the total self indulgence of this whole project.

He chooses a few of the small industrial towns in Massachusetts that are dying and in decay as his backdrops and ‘live’ sets. He is there so often scouting for locations and befriending the locals that as bewildered as they are by the total disruption and his shenanigans, they all appear to welcome him warmly.

Some of the work is profoundly beautiful but all of it is rather sad… Crewdson loves to shoot his photographs at dusk and the combination of these declining towns and rather forlorn models in the fading light… creates an eerie misery. Some reminded me of Edward Hopper, but others were very definitely influenced by the work of movie maker David Lynch especially as Crewdson professed his love of ‘Blue Velvet’. Some pieces have far less impact than others and looking at these closely I realised that I was in fact much more interested in the man and the process rather than the actual finished product.

Sometimes Crewsdon had brand new sets built in Sound Stages and I couldn’t escape the nagging question (which the film never even touched upon) that who was bank-rolling this very expensive and costly operation? New York’s Gagossian Gallery would have to sell an awful lot of art, and at very high prices for him to even break even. I learned later that he has a ‘day job’ as at Yale but I’m sure that they don’t pay their Professors that much money.

Whatever you think of the art, its creation at least is a totally fascinating and unique story that has been very well told in this beguiling new film.

Available at Amazon

★★★★★★★★