With his lavishly staged and artistically increased photographs, Gregory Crewdson counts among today's most famous representatives of this field.
Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1962. His father was a psychoanalyst, who had his practice in the family's house, so that the young Gregory Crewdson was able to spend a lot of time secretly listening in on the consultations.
Accordingly, the artist encountered the dark and mysterious side beneath the facade of human existence at an early point - as a photographer he makes these fundamental encounters visible in his art.
In 1985 Gregory Crewdson completed his studies at the State University of New York in Purchase with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Gregory Crewdson then completed the Master of Fine Arts in photography at Yale in 1988. From that time on Gregory Crewdson had acquired the tools of the trade and was able to stage his own pictures. Gregory Crewdson shoots most of his large painting-like photographs, which emanate a surreal and oppressive atmosphere like a David Lynch film, in Massachusetts, where the family owns a country house. Gregory Crewdson meticulously prepares his photographs, so that they are often compared with Hollywood films: Roundabout 30 people work on Gregory Crewdson's "sets", in order to make sure the shot is perfect. Another large crew works on the pictures' post-processing.
Works by Gregory Crewdson are in possession of numerous renowned museums, among them the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Between 2005 and 2008 photographs made between 1985 and 2005 were shown in a comprehensive retrospective which toured as traveling exhibition with stops at the Kunstverein Hanover, the Krefeld Kunstmuseen, the Fotomuseum Winterthur, the Landesgalerie Linz and the Fotomuseum in The Hague.
Gregory Crewdson, who is director of Graduate Studies in Photography at Yale University, lives and works in New York.