Gregory Crewdson

Untitled, 2004

Spencer and Trisha came to visit for a week and in between rain showers (and B&H camera shopping) we managed to get to the Chelsea galleries where Gregory Crewdson was having a solo show at the Luhrig Augustine. Only $75,000 per print which is a steal considering that each contains a whole story, complete with lighting and special effects. I love (loooooooove) his work. He captures the melancholy of suburban America in a hyper-stylized, eerie way and makes the viewer feel uncomfortable, fearful, and isolated in an ultimately mundane environment. (Bucolic these photos are not.) I was reading Harper's Bazaar at Marquet the other day and guess who collects Crewdson? Julianne Moore. Anyway, I poked around online and found this great interactive online article by Aperture, the photography organization and magazine. The website mixes details of several images with interviews by the models he uses, his DP (director of photography) and production manager etc. It's done quite well.

1 M3 Light, 1999

And Olafur Eliasson is back! MoMA and PS1's retrospective display an incredibly extensive collection of lights of all shapes and sizes (and intensities and interior gases), kaleidoscopes, cycloramas, and a wall made of reindeer moss. Personally I loved his sodium vapor hallway that sucked the color out of everything around and turned the museum-goers into sepia portraits of themselves. He also had a strobe catching the rain midstream but I've been spoiled by David Parson's "Caught" and find all strobe stuff a little trite now. Check out the New York Time's slideshow of images from Take Your Time, his current exhibit.