2012 © Gregory Crewdson

Acclaimed American photographer Gregory Crewdson is best known for his richly staged, light-commanding, film still-like images. Juxtaposing the real with the surreal, the photographs are an epic production from start to finish.

Documentary storyteller Ben Shapiro began filming Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters in 2000. The film offers a supreme view of the creation of Crewdson’s images and an in-depth look at his artistic process. The film premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and was also featured in the 2012 Independent Film Festival Boston.

Photographing for his project Beneath the Roses, the documentary follows the creation of Crewdson’s elaborate dreamscapes which are designed, constructed, and set-up with the help of a crew of 60 and the budget of an independent movie. Using light, color, and character to invoke astounding images, Crewdson draws inspiration from his personal life, growing up with a psychologist father, and his childhood allure for Diane Arbus.

The movie trailer, screenings, and more information can be found here.

Crewdson has appeared in Aperture issue 190 and The New York Times Photographs (Aperture, 2011). Crewdson was also featured in an Aperture web exclusive.

Join us for a panel discussion with longtime photo editor Kathy Ryan. She will discuss her new book, The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture, 2011) at Barnes and Noble, along with photographers Gregory Crewdson and Taryn Simon.

The book reflects upon and interrogates the nature of both photography and print magazines, at this pivotal moment in their history and evolution. It presents some of the finest commissioned photographs worldwide of various types, including reportage, portraiture, style, conceptual photography, and photo illustration. Also addressed are issues of documentary photography in relation to more conceptual photography; the efficacy of storytelling; and what makes an image evidentiary, objective, subjective, truthful, or a tool for advocacy; as well as discussion of whether these matters are currently moot, or more critical than ever. As such, The New York Times Magazine Photographs aims to serve as a springboard for a rigorous, necessary, and revitalized examination of photography as presented within a modern journalistic context.

Kathy Ryan (editor) is the award-winning photo editor of the New York Times Magazine. Ryan was recognized as Canon Picture Editor of the Year in 1997 at the Visa Pour l’Image festival in Perpignan, France, and in 2003 was named Picture Editor of the Year by the Lucie Awards.

Thursday, November 17, 2011
7:00 pm

FREE

Barnes & Noble Bookstore
150 East 86th Street
New York, New York
(212) 369-2180

Internationally celebrated photographer Gregory Crewdson who appeared in Aperture magazine issue no. 190 (and is a former Aperture Work Scholar ) recently debuted a new series of photographs entitled Sanctuary, opening at Gagosian Gallery in New York. In this new body of work, Crewdson photographs the decaying grandeur of film sets on the back lot of legendary Italian film studio Cinecitta, once the setting of numerous iconic films by filmmakers Federico Fellini and Roberto Rosellini. Captured with striking detail, these black and white images present a different take on ongoing themes of the cinematic, truth and fiction, in the Artist’s work. A catalog of the exhibition is available through Abrams books.

Click here to view Aperture magazine’s featured web content with Crewdson, including exclusive production images and interviews.

The Times Center presents, TimesTalks: Stories & Pictures: Gregory Crewdson, A.O. Scott and Noah Baumbach on Tuesday, October 5th. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott talks about storytelling with film and photography with Academy Award-nominated writer-director Noah Baumbach (“Greenberg”) and renowned photographer Gregory Crewdson (“Beneath the Roses,” “Sanctuary”). Buy tickets here.

Gregory Crewdson: Sanctuary
September 23 – October 30, 2010
980 Madison Avenue
New York, New York

This Thursday at Aperture Gallery, The Projected Image, part of the tenth season of the series Confounding Expectations: Photography in Context will explore the multiple ways in which contemporary artists have utilized projection and installation strategies to display still photographic images, creating immersive and cinema-like experiences in museum and gallery environments. Departing from the large-scale, tableau treatments of the photographic image printed and framed as wall-based objects, exemplified in works by Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky, and Gregory Crewdson, in recent years contemporary artists have increasingly employed projection devices—ranging from analogue to digital high-definition—to display photographic images as immaterial light projections, often incorporating temporal and audiovisual elements that recall cinematic contexts yet retain distinctly photographic qualities. This panel discussion, moderated by George Baker, associate professor of art history, UCLA; panelists includes photographers Andrea Geyer, Paul Pfeiffer, and Krzysztof Wodiczko.

The Projected Image: Panel Discussion
Thursday, December 10, 7 pm

FREE

The New School
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
New York, New York

Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria, 2007 © Pieter Hugo;
Hans William Bentinck, Earl of Portland, K.G., 1698-1699 © Hyacinthe Rigaud

Exhibition on view:
The Endless Renaissance
Friday, April 17–Sunday, August 16, 2009

The Bass Museum of Art
2121 Park Avenue
Miami Beach, Florida
(305) 673-7530

In Endless Renaissance, The Bass Museum of Art brings together a collection of historical and contemporary art to create a dialogue between the past and the present. It has been argued that when an artist integrates aspects of earlier work in their own, they change the way we look at the quoted artwork. For example, when you look at Michelangelo’s Mona Lisa, it is hard not to see Marcel Duchamp’s subversion of the painting with a mustache and goatee.

In Endless Renaissance, works by 17th, 18th, and 19th century masters such as Delacroix, Goya, and Rigaud are juxtaposed with the work of contemporary artists such as Gregory Crewdson, Pieter Hugo, and Sol Lewitt, all featured in recent issues of Aperture magazine. The idea is to highlight that all art, regardless of when it was created, is contemporary and reflects subjects which affected the artist at that specific point of time.

Untitled, © Gregory Crewdson, 2001–2002

Exhibition on view:
Wednesday, February 25–Saturday, April 25,  2009
Columbus College of Art and Design
Bureau for Open Culture
107 N. Ninth St.
Columbus, OH

Do you by instinct start whispering when you enter the archways of museum galleries?  Does the mere sight of the white walls in a hospital cause you to feel nauseated? Do you instantly straighten your spine when you walk in to a school?

These are the types of questions that the exhibition Of Other Spaces is trying to address. It is presented by the CCAD’s Bureau for Open Culture, and is inspired by Michel Foucault’s philosophy on social relations and cultural practices expressed in the intersection of space, architecture and history. Foucault presented the idea that spaces, also called heterotopias, are charged with socio-cultural authority and have an impact on our actions. Of Others Spaces wants us to consider the ways in which space is loaded with authority, and explores how it controls our behavior, activates memory, provides insight, and stimulates imagination under the influence of social-cultural conditions.

The group exhibition presents work from several artists, including Gregory Crewdson, who was featured in the spring 2008 issue of Aperture magazine.