Celebrated still photographer Gregory Crewdson is moving closer towards his directorial debut. It’s a transition to moving imagery that seems natural given that his still work often entails large production crews, extensive location scouting, ambitious lighting and other dynamics akin to high-profile feature film and television. Crewdson even has a screenplay providing context and backstory for each image he seeks to capture. His single shots–which are elaborately staged, heightened reality compositions–carry a cinematic scale and an emotional intimacy for which he’s been lauded.
Last week marked the premiere of his series of portraits, “An Eclipse of Moths,” at the reopening of the Gagosian in Beverly Hills, Calif. Shot in a rural, post-industrial New England town, “An Eclipse of Moths” features 16 large-scale panoramic exteriors that capture society at its most isolated and contemplative. Though the work was done well prior to the pandemic, it takes on a more haunting resonance in light of the related lockdowns that have left many experiencing isolation, loss, doubt, even forms of alienation.
“An Eclipse of Moths” follows in the footsteps of such widely acclaimed bodies of work from Crewdson as “Natural Wonder,” “Cathedral of the Pines,” “Twilight,” “Sanctuary” and “Beneath the Roses.” The latter series of pictures took nearly 10 years to complete and deployed a crew of more than 100.
Dating back to his days as a grad student at Yale in the late 1980s (he is now Yale’s director of graduate studies in photography), Crewdson has had a deep interest in combining cinematic and still photography production. “That has evolved over the years to where it is now, working for all intents and purposes with a production crew on the scale of an independent movie–camera operator, DP, line producers, prop people, location managers,” he related. “I’ve always really enjoyed the bringing together of these two worlds and two different ways of thinking–bringing cinematic production into a single image.”
At one point a few years ago it seemed that Crewdson was on the verge of his first foray into feature filmmaking. He was slated to direct Reflective Light for Focus Features, an adaptation of the Carla Buckley novel “The Deepest Secret” in which a teenage boy is gravely allergic to sunlight. His driven mother creates an oddly nocturnal lifestyle/environment for him. But a turn of events causes this existence to unravel.
The plans to direct Reflective Light changed, though. Crewdson noted that he’s “thankful for the support” he received from Focus but he couldn’t jump into feature filmmaking just for the sake of jumping in. Crewdson said he had to “feel I could get my vision of the world on the screen” and the necessary elements weren’t quite in place for him to do that.
Crewdson has since further adapted the story, not only turning it into an episodic TV series but also, he said, to make it “feel much more squarely in my world.” The series had generated interest prior to the pandemic, which of course had put such pursuits on hold. But prospects for it are beginning to percolate again, hopefully translating into that much anticipated directorial opportunity for Crewdson who’s looking forward to the challenge of taking his frames as a photographer and applying that art and approach to a movie. He believes his work will “feel different” from anything else in the filmmaking landscape.
“The challenge,” he continued, “would be to extend that (still image) world, that feeling of mystery, unease and wonder–whatever that might be–and bring it to a new form.”
If the series comes to fruition, Crewdson said his longtime DP Rick Sands, whose roots are in movies, would be involved. Crewdson described Sands as “a total genius” who runs his lighting team. Artists who work with Sands, shared Crewdson, “completely respect and admire him” and “learn from him.”
Crewdson observed that to a large degree he’s been “shaped by movies,” citing as initial influences director David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Crewdson related that these were among the films that “early on in your life have this profound effect on you and stay with you the rest of your career.” As for the “more contemporary directors” who have impacted him, that list includes Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sofia Coppola, “all people I deeply respect and feel connected to.”
Familiar path
The path Crewdson is looking to take to TV and feature films is familiar to many on his team–members of whom over the years have either started in film and television or segued from working with him to establishing themselves substantively in features and/or episodic fare. SHOOT ran across a prime example during its just concluded The Road To Emmy Series of feature stories which included coverage of DP Erik Messerschmidt, ASC who back in July garnered his first career Emmy nomination for lensing an episode of Mindhunter (Netflix), the series from David Fincher.
Messerschmidt’s roots are in still photography and at one point he worked for Crewdson. These still chops were key in helping Messerschmidt meaningfully connect with Fincher. Messerschmidt had served as a gaffer on the David Fincher-directed, Jeff Cronenweth-shot Gone Girl. Knowing of Messerschmidt’s still experience, Fincher asked him to do some promotional photo work for Gone Girl. Fincher then took Messerschmidt under his wing, leading to the opportunity on Mindhunter. The collaborative relationship with Fincher has since expanded to the feature realm as Messerschmidt recently wrapped principal photography on Mank which stars Gary Oldman in the title role of screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. The film delves into Mankiewicz’s battle with director Orson Welles over screenplay credit for the classic 1941 film Citizen Kane.
Crewdson’s imagemaking has proven to be a spawning ground for his collaborators as they move into film and television. Additionally his still work has been used as a visual reference for movies and TV/streaming content by assorted DPs and other artisans.
Crewdson was the subject of a Ben Shapiro-directed documentary, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. Nominated for a Documentary Spotlight Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Fest, the film chronicled Crewdson’s still photo creative process over a 10-year span.
Now Crewdson himself is looking to settle into the director’s chair. And for a stretch during the pandemic when remote learning firmly took hold, he connected with filmmakers and others via a “pop-up” lecture series hosted by the graduate photography department at the Yale School of Art. Crewdson initiated the program in late March and it ran into May. Among the guest artists he interviewed–with his MFA photography students also getting the chance to pose questions-were directors Errol Morris, Spike Jonze (appearing with Beastie Boys Mike D and Adam Horovitz), Jim Jarmusch, Kelly Reichardt, Ben Stiller and Ari Aster, as well as actors Brit Marling, Tilda Swinton and Cate Blanchett.
