Untitled (Summer Rain) (2004)
I am a longtime admirer of the photography of Gregory Crewdson. In fact, some of his work is second only to the mature period of Rothko in eliciting anywhere from tears-to-weeping from me. I will now take care to try and limit my thoughts to solely this photograph of his.
Straightaway I see, from a considerable distance and all at once, the form of a man (lit a bit from his front, so not quite a silhouette)/ the opened-driver door of his car behind him/ a gas can? (No, that's his briefcase, cast aside). Instantly I feel my stomach tighten as the heaviness of the subject's despair becomes my own.
I am witnessing the loneliness of a fellow-participant in this human condition unconsciously taking a moment. It is an impromptu pause, physically away from the very vehicle carrying him towards a reckoning of wasted time and wrong actions... of disappointment... of it being too late. I, alone, am aware of this interruption of a decades-long hypnosis, its sudden vacuum now allowing a singular dread to wash over him. Or perhaps his motionless quality is a physical paralysis from the overwhelming turmoil of so many desperate, then defeated, thoughts firing at once.
While this moment is a relatable "slice of day-to-day life," there is a hyperrealistic quality to the overall image that is cinematic and exciting. As my focus begins to move to other areas of the photograph, tension builds, my angst increases and my eyes well up as I feel the weight of this moment, suspended just a hair before impact, more and more deeply. It is both delightful and devastating.
I see many instances of artificial lighting that my eyes are drawn to. Many of the street-level store fronts are lit, creating a structural rhythm to the composition that helps me, along with the roofs and street surface, unconsciously place the device of vanishing point to the middle-left of the image. This lighting also reveals the stores to be in various stages of disrepair en (inevitable) route to failure and closure. Some stores have dirty unkempt windows, others appear disheveled inside while one, towards the foreground, has been boarded up in finality.
With one glance along this compositional rhythm I learn that we are set in an economically depressed area. Also: a good amount of the street towards the background is brightly lit from above, as if the subject is just out of view, not yet ready to enter back into the line-of-sight of an all-knowing moon's watchful and judgmental eye above.
Other lighting intentionally reflects vividly off the wet, grey street, guiding me further still to the feelings of isolation experienced on a rainy night alone.
I see that the colors of this image stay within a relatively narrow color palette of earthy, muted blue, yellow, tan, brown and grey tones. The many strategic choices in lighting help create escalating, other-worldly drama while concurrently the subject struggles within the narrowing of choices and colors in his world.
The entirety of this image is in focus, from the foreground to the background, infinitely. The choice of shooting the subject from far-away not only assigns me (the viewer) a voyeuristic quality, it helps (along with the use of a wide-angle lens) to create the very deep depth-of-field necessary for this image.
Lastly, as I pull my gaze and awareness back out from the image, I see tree leaves in the immediate upper left and upper right of the image. I now realize they were helping to frame the subject while further defining the space and the distance of my viewpoint to him. The simple technique of adding these elements to the foreground did exactly what they were meant to; they helped create a vignette that immediately and fully drew me into this moment.
This image, produced by Gregory Crewdson, is achingly beautiful to me. I am grateful that a part of me will now be connected to it, forever and always.