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In a Lonely Place

Gregory Crewdson

Danni Zuvela
Eyeline 80
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An interracial couple, undressed, post-coital, on a filthy mattress by a polluted creek. A pregnant women waits at a traffic light opposite a pregnancy clinic, silently observed by the driver of a solitary car waiting at the lights. In another photograph, another world, another woman stands by the motel mirror, blood on her thighs, a man’s dark suit hanging in the closet behind her. A woman—pregnant or obese—alone on a second floor balcony, watches an empty street. A pale white woman in a shabby motel room watches a nude infant asleep on the motel room bed as dirty snowfalls settle outside. The door is wide open, the key left in the lock. Then we notice his complexion—so dark compared to his mother’s pinkish colouring and brittle blond hair. Our eyes take in the bottle of pills on the bedside table, the rotary dial phone, the peeling wall timber. The image texture is so fine we can make out the polyester pilling on the blanket and soft folds of the mismatched satin trim. The faded—no doubt long regretted—tattoo of a goat’s head on the woman’s plump, pregnancy-acne-covered arm. These are figures in transition, their futures as laden with doubt as their pasts are with regret.

As standard-bearers of the ‘cinematic turn’, Gregory Crewdson’s photographs host the dialogue between the still and moving image in contemporary photography. That is, while their content is seductive—eerie no-places echoing with the sadness of cancelled dreams—their real ‘message’ is the recursive exchange between the cinema and the still image. Photography’s attempts to harness the compelling power of narrativity underline its referentiality, but also its inherent stasis. At the same time, increasingly sophisticated cinematic techniques remind us... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline

Untitled (Maple Street), 2003-2005. From ‘Beneath the Roses’. © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Untitled (Maple Street), 2003-2005. From ‘Beneath the Roses’. © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Untitled (7), 2009. From ‘Sanctuary’. Pigmented inkjet print, 28.5 x 35.25inches framed (72.39 x 89.53cm). Edition of 6 with 2 AP. © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.

Untitled (7), 2009. From ‘Sanctuary’. Pigmented inkjet print, 28.5 x 35.25inches framed (72.39 x 89.53cm). Edition of 6 with 2 AP. © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery, New York.