LOT Phillips de Pury & Company  /  PHOTOGRAPHS PART I  / 

67

GREGORY CREWDSON (American, b. 1962) UNTITLED signed, dated and editioned

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:10,000.00 - 15,000.00 USD
GREGORY CREWDSON (American, b. 1962) UNTITLED signed, dated and editioned
GREGORY CREWDSON (American, b. 1962) UNTITLED signed, dated and editioned "Gregory Crewdson 1998, 2/10" in black ink on verso of board chromogenic color print 50 x 60 in. (127 x 152.4 cm) 1998 this print is number 2 from an edition of 10 from the TWILIGHT series The TWILIGHT series, begun in 1998, demonstrates Crewdson's development from the completely synthetic worlds he crafted in his NATURAL WONDER series (see Lots 67 and 194), to shooting outdoor environments of existing communities. Often called a "docudrama photographer," Crewdson merges traditional photography with the conceptual qualities of postmodernist art. He functions as a cinematographer, equipped with a 35-member crew to capture the environment and the people of the suburb of Lee in western Massachusetts. Crewdson stages the townspeople, however, and creates the narrative unfolding in each photograph. Indeed, Crewdson notes Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF the THIRD KIND (1977) as a major influence. In this film, everyday people are transfigured by the powerful presence of unexplainable things. These two narratives (see also Lot 195) are reminiscent of episodes of the TWILIGHT ZONE, with bizarre occurrences staged in familiar settings. They are taken at the eery hour between dusk and nightfall, when colors are at their most brilliant and luminous, and eyes struggle to adjust. Rick Moody explores the many meanings associated with the word twilight, and they each seem strangely fitting when considering the series. The "twilight zone...refers to the lowest part of the photic region of the ocean....Twilight sleep [is] induced by morphine and used in childbirth [and] twilight state [is] 'a dreamy state lacking touch with present reality, occurring in epilepsy, hysteria, schizophrenia, and sometimes induced with narcotics'" (Moody, TWILIGHT, New York, 2002, p. 11). Each of these photographs was taken from an aerial perspective, which Crewdson had previously employed in his series entitled HOVER (1996-1997). When inspecting the photographs offered here, it seems "as though we were looking down on an out-of-the-way American town from the point of view of a visiting alien who stares on from his passing ship. In the town itself, with its neatly trimmed, reassuring single-family homes, the supernatural seems to have collided head-on with the familiar: a cow lies on its back on the lawn between two houses while tens of firemen secure the area and a man searches the sky [see Lot 195]. Could the cow have rained down from above?" (Foschi, "Gregory Crewdson," ZOOM, March/April 2001, p. 58). In this lot, a family enjoys a barbecue next to a empty plot of land encircled by portable toilets. A maintenance man encounters a glowing light that is being emitted from one of these toilets, yet the family remains unfazed.
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