Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York, on September 26, 1962. His first experience of photography, at the age of ten, was a Diane Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. At sixteen, he played in a band called the Speedies, whose first single was titled "Let Me Take Your Foto." In 1985, he received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase, where he studied photography with Jan Groover and Laurie Simmons. He graduated with an M.F.A. in photography from Yale University in 1988. For his thesis project, he took photographic portraits of residents of the area around Lee, Massachusetts, where his family had a cabin. It was also in Lee that Crewdson conceived of his later Natural Wonder series (1992–97), in which birds, insects, and mutilated body parts are presented in surreal yet mundane domestic settings. Photographs from Natural Wonder were shown in the 1991 exhibition Pleasures and Terrors in Domestic Comfort at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In his next series, Hover (1992-97), Crewdson turned away from brightly colored close-ups to black-and-white bird's-eye views of strange situations (a man covering a street with sod, a bear gawked at by onlookers as it rummages through garbage) set in the streets and backyards of Lee. His Twilight series (1[zasłonięte]998-20) introduced color and an enlarged scale"50 x 60 inches" to this surreal formula, resulting in decidedly cinematic images reminiscent of the films of Steven Spielberg. These recent photographs have become increasingly spectacular and complex to produce, requiring dozens of assistants, Hollywood-style lighting, and specially crafted stage sets.
Duży format: 42 x 30,5 cm
