Gregory Crewdson

"What I'm very, very interested in is a moment that hovers between before and after. A moment that is unresolved, that remains a question. And necessarily, I think the ultimate meaning needs to remain a mystery for myself. Else, it wouldn't be as interesting."
Gregory Crewdson interview, Day-to-Day interview

Lately, I have found myself more and more intrigued by color photography, which sounds amateurish, I know - I like color pictures - but my unexperienced little eye needs to start somewhere. I went to a bookshop a few months back looking to spend twenty dollars and found "Twilight," a collection of staged, color photography by Gregory Crewdson with an introduction by one of my favorite writers, Rick Moody.

Crewdson's pictures revolve around seemingly ordinary people and places animated by something slightly disordinary. The suburban landscape and all of its curiosities and questions are foregrounded in his photographs, and they are at once lonely, beautiful and cinematic. I like the way he uses light to tell stories, how his images are moments difficult to pin down, and how, as Rick Moody explains in his foreword, "the twilight photographs we have before us both seem to be easy to interpret and very difficult at the same time."

Open car doors, wandering wildlife and people staring at something just beyond the eye of the camera are some recurring motifs. What I find to be most eerie are the pictures depicting something very elaborate happening in one section of the photograph (a young girl in her pajamas stands outside her house watching a man climb out of an empty school bus), while other people in the photo are seemingly unaware (the girl's parents are sitting in the living room watching television).

More Gregory Crewdson images can be found here and here.