美国梦的黑暗面——关于Gregory Crewds...

　　The Dark Side Of The America Dream
　　
　　
　　
　　Stephan Berg
　　
　　 Gregory Crewdson's photography revolves around a single large theme: the penetration of the repressed, eerie, and Inexplicable into a supposedly protected, pretty world. With an energy that can clearly be described as obsessive, he works to create a universe of images whose detailed and lovingly portrayed idyll is lastingly and irrevocably destabilized. Given his preference for elaborately produced photographs, in which the supernatural plays a central role, it may come as a surprise that Crewdson refers to himself as an "American realist landscape photographer"' and thus places himself in the tradition of the great chroniclers of everyday American life from Walker Evans to Carry Winogrand and William Eggleston. This self-description, however, is not as flirtatious and far-fetched as it sounds. In essence, Crewdson's work is always concerned with charting small-town rural America, surveying life beyond the urban centers with precision and credibility. Although he lives in New York, he is interested in the unspectacular America-the America of small suburbs of white and pastel wooden houses nestled into a soft landscape of gently rolling hills, all tinted by the warm evening sun of an endless Indian summer. It is an America of well-tended front yards and intersections with little traffic, of rocking chairs on wooden porches, and feudal living rooms furnished with a hint of kitsch; an America in which everything is close by, where the high school still looks exactly like it did in the 1973 film American Graffiti. Naturally, therefore, it is also a picture world whose credibility largely derives from its feeling like the sum of all those images of America one has already seen: a reality of the second degree that comes across with the convincingness of primary reality. An illusion that unlike a copy is superior to reality in that it recreates and perfects the original.
　　
　　But when the foreign penetrates the familiar, at the latest, Crewdson's engineered realism ends; it turns into a magical picture-making ingenuity that uses "the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire. His emphasis on the aberrant and abnormal clearly connects him with Diane Arbus, whose work he greatly appreciates, and who like no one before her illuminated the dark and alien sides of American reality. Crewdson's picture world reveals yet stronger parallels to Cindy Sherman's work, for example to her early Untitled Film Stills, and also to the later horror scenarios. His works can also be associated with Jeff Wall's meticulously staged lightbox pictures. Like Wall, he is interested in creating a world whose minute realism makes it absolutely credible and which at the same time always goes beyond what is realistically possible. Crewdson's work, like Wall's, always focuses on the interface between nature and civilization. Despite these parallels, the two photographers differ fundamentally in other respects. Whereas Wall uses chiefly art-historical models in his seductive yet cold neon picture machines and focuses in particular on social conflict situations in American society, Crewdson falls back on the popular myths of Hollywood cinema and uses them to create suggestive pictures of an American society that is alienated from itself and looks into the abyss of its own damaged collective psyche. This view of an ego that has become foreign to itself was essentially prefigured by the artist's father, a psycho-analyst, and this connection has been mentioned in numerous writings as well as by Crewdson himself.
　　
　　Although these biographical circumstances were certainly influential, more interesting still is the specific iconography that Crewdson developed from it. From the beginning, he understood photographs in a particular way and sees photography as a process of cinematic compression. This is already the case with his first works from the years 1986-88, small-format photos taken without any particular preparation that show the domestic context as a place of structural loneliness and undefined expectations.
　　
　　Crewdson formulates another important aspect of his art in his second major group of works. Natural Wonder (1992-97). This consists of a total of forty photographs taken of model sets built completely in the studio. The shots present a natural world populated by birds, butterflies, and insects as a magical-mythical zone abounding in enigmatic events. From a formal point of view these model worlds are clearly based on the dioramas of natural history museums, but they are not designed for systematic, generic categorization and clarity in terms of their content; rather, they stage a game where nature follows rules the human mind cannot fathom and ultimately overgrows and conquers human space. This can be seen as an expression of a fundamental conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian －a conflict that leads here to the victory of the rationally incomprehensible.
　　
　　One of the most impressive photos in Natural Wonder shows birds against the background of several farmhouses, with a ladder leaning against a tree. The birds are guarding a circle of eggs. The mysteriously perfect symmetry of this circle is meant as a metaphor for the inexplicable subject of the picture. Whether this circle of eggs was put there by people perhaps in connection with the ladder leaning against the tree which could mean the eggs have been stolen, or whether it is actually the work of the birds themselves, remains open, as does the actual meaning of the circle itself. Circles appear at various points in Crewdson's works. Crewdson himself once pointed out in an interview that the circle could be seen as the perfect metaphor for a romantic obsession, ' but rather than helping solve this riddle, he is evidently more interested in preserving his secret than making it generally comprehensible. The circle could also be read as a metaphor for the idea of unity and perfection. Crewdson is indeed working on the creation of a completely constructed world, one in which every detail is just right and the whole model cosmos is only fully comprehensible within its own hermetic logic. Photography is his preferred medium because it allows him to create images of a "perfect world.'
　　
　　The perfection so important to Crewdson is intimately tied up with control. The exact planning and construction of every detail of the picture means that the camera only records what the photographer wants us to see, not any chance details he might discover after the picture has been developed. This is what allows him to present the
　　
　　
　　Incredible something always prominent in his pictures as something natural, without revealing to the viewer what makes it function. Natural Wonder approaches this context from a microcosmic perspective, paying great attention to detail and showing nature's uncontrollable, independent existence with a mixture of magical romanticism and shocking graphicness. In particular the last works of this series show human body parts (casts made from Crewdson's own body) with thorns growing out of them, some of them bloody, surrounded by blossoms and rampant undergrowth-here he unashamedly works with elements of classical horror aesthetics. In doing so he plays on people's primeval fear of the fragmentation of their body, which here is swallowed up by nature and be-comes a hybrid plant-animal. These pictures were Crewdson's way of dealing with his difficult private circumstances at the time, and independent of that they also reveal an affinity to the work of David Lynch, in particular his film Blue Velvet. In both Lynch's and Crewdson's work, horror and the inscrutable are lurking behind the facade of idyllic small-town houses and manicured front yards. In Lynch's film, where the camera pans down deep into the grass and discovers a severed human ear next to a colony of swarming bugs, there is the same constant wonderment about a strange, unsettling world where the sweetness of the robin is separated from psychopathic madness byjust the blink of an eye. Crewdson's often somnambulant yet highly structured picture world perfectly matches Lynch's attitude to his own films: "I like to dive into a dream world that I've made, a world I chose and that I have complete control over.'"'
　　
　　With Hover (1996-97), Crewdson made a decisive change that in part linked back to his first works from the 1980s and first formulated in full clarity the central theme of his work, which is still current today: the photographic survey of suburban, small-town America as an in-depth psychological study of its hidden fears, longings, and desires. In Hover, his only black-and-white series to date, the camera looks from a high vantage point onto streets and fenced yards. At these interfaces between nature and civilization he observes a man laying down a lawn in the oad in front of his house, bears rummaging through the contents of a garbage can, firemen at an enigmatic emergency call, mysterious concentric circles in the grass of a well-kept yard, and a woman who has laid out flower beds at regular intervals in the middle of the road. In all these scenes of dislocation and dissociation, the people in the photographs are silent and strangely indifferent, even as central characters. They stare at the events before them as if hypnotized and incapable of communication neither horror nor joy moves them while the order of their little world gradually dissolves.
　　
　　Whereas the relatively small format of the prints and the sobriety of the black-and-white in Hover help lend it an almost documentary austerity, creating a refreshing contrast to the content of the works, Crewdson's next series of works, first Twilight (1998-2002), then Dream House (2002) and Beneath the Roses (2003-05), are much richer and more baroque. Twilight, his most famous series of photographs to date, can be considered the guiding concept of all his works since they are all actually messages from a twilight zone in which the shadows lengthen and the artificial light of the street lamps replaces natural light. It is the hour when the power of reason wanes and fantasy weaves its own stories, just before Goya's Sleep of Reason and the monsters it produces. In Crewdson's world the hidden forces and dark energies of unbridled and untamable nature have now even entered people's homes. An uprooted tree lies across the living room; it could not possibly have come into the house through the relatively small hole in the roof. A bear roams through a room that is completely overgrown. In another room a man feverishly lays strips of lawn one over the other to form a conical mound. In other works, the living-room floor has been broken through, letting an eerie luminescence shine from the depths below. The protective cell that is the house has lost its sheltering function and become an unsafe place ruled by repressed energies and forces. In a partly tiled, tidy bathroom we see a boy injust his underpants, sticking his arm through a hole in the floor into a dark, unsanitary underground cavity with outlet pipes running through it. Here, paradigmatically, Crewdson stages the first contact with the subconscious and repressed as an act that reveals the subject to be fallen and alienated from itself: the part of the arm that reaches down into the dark is deathly pale and unnaturally long. It gives the impression of having nothing to do with the rest of the body up in the bathroom, of being somehow detached.
　　
　　With Twilight and the subsequent series, Crewdson worked chiefly as a director-with a large crew and elaborate operations, as if producing a film. The resulting photographs were shot partly in a studio, partly "on location," and were often the result of weeks of work in which intricate sets were built and every detail was carefully conceived and planned. Since all the works made in this way aim to create an eminently cinematic effect and sometimes even look as if they were stills from a familiar film, it is all the more important that in the end, only one single photograph remains from each arranged scene. Crewdson uses symbolic images and fragments of narration from the great trove of popular film mythology, connecting them and distilling a style of his own from the countless science-fiction, mystery, and horror film scenes. The photographs draw on elements from Stephen King's books and films as well as scenes from Steven Spielberg's E. T. - The Extraterrestrial (1982), and above all from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The hallucinatory, surreal scenes of the gloomy teenage elegy Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001), which deals with the philosophy of time and has become a cult film, also show clear parallels to Crewdson's imagery: an airplane engine smashes through the roof of a house, for example, and comes to rest in the bedroom of a boy who has just left the room after waking from a nightmare.
　　
　　The television series The Twilight Zone, scripted by Rod Serling and broadcast on CBS between 1959 and 1965, manifested the same existentially uncanny mood found in many of Crewdson's works. He has a clear spiritual affinity to Ray Bradbury, the great American naturalist with distinctive dark leanings—his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962) embodies the same uncategorizable hybrid of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and fairy tale as do Gregory Crewdson's picture worlds. But the story line of the novel, which is set in the fictitious but realistically portrayed small community of Green Town, Illinois, could have come straight out of Crewdson's sets. With Bradbury it is a fair that comes to town on a cool fall evening and mesmerizes the inhabitants that allegorically represents the "dark" and the "other" that Crewdson's works also revolve around. Both works convey a similar mood. one that hovers between neutral observation, fairy-tale enchantment, and surreal eeriness, holding what is shown and told in a limbo between dream and reality.
　　
　　Crewdson calls his photographs "single-frame movies," and this character is brought out with particular distinctness in the Dream House series (2002). This group of works was photographed entirely in an unoccupied house in Rutland, Vermont, which Crewdson used with all its furnishings. He engaged Hollywood celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, William H. Macy, Julianne Moore, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as protagonists. This all-star cast has an amazing effect on the photographs. Because the actors' faces are fixed in collective memory, the images from films where one has seen them now blend with the scenes of domestic loneliness and autism－often reminiscent of Edward Hopper－to create a rich and convincing web of fictions. The movie stars make it seem as though the falsity of Crewdson's constructed scenes has changed into the authenticity of a cinema myth, though this itself is artificial. This series of photographs, like all of his works, aims to show that every picture is constructed, its images borrowed.
　　
　　Both Twilight and Beneath the fioseswork with a relatively small repertoire of recurring motifs. As with all of Crewdson's works, these cannot be categorized exactly in geographical or temporal terms, but their composition makes them pictorial psychograms of an America that has lost itself. In this context, the naked women who turn up in trailer doors or bedrooms, mute and disorientated, are like signs of an irretrievably lost paradise. Crewdson confronts us time and again with cars that have come to a halt, the driver's door open, on deserted streets somewhere in town. The great American dream since the conquest of the West-to unlock the world from the seat of an automobile-disintegrates here into helpless immobility. The sovereign freedom of the American individual, who controls himself and his world from an air-conditioned capsule, has turned into loneliness and vulnerability. A man stands in the pouring rain in front of his car in the middle of the main street in an anonymous small town, staring fatalistically at the ground in front of him with hands outstretched. The pictures of destroyed interiors, where the seemingly hypnotized residents have broken through the walls and floor in their manic haste, work the same way. In search of something behind it all, an explanation, a key of some kind, they ultimately encounter only themselves and their agony. The television screen, appropriately, shows just snow. Hopelessness and eternal repetition are also conveyed by the nighttime scene in the forest: illuminated by car headlights, a man is busily digging up a mass of suitcases and boxes from a deep hole in the ground. Here the individual encounters the "skeletons in his closet," metaphorically speaking, evidently without really being able to bring himself to confront them-the suitcases and boxes all remain shut, and we cannot even tell if they are really being dug out or are perhaps being buried. In this world, where instability has become the prevailing experience, the custodians of the law no longer provide any security: the fire and police departments appear as helpless helpers who stand bewildered before the manifestations of the inexplicable. Their attempts to extinguish fires or solve crimes seem like token gestures, helpless efforts whose futility is plain to see. Even the school buses, whose warm, yellow, old-fashioned appearance makes them a quintessential image of true American tradition, coziness and reliability, have become vehicles that will never reach a school again-they lie overturned on the road or become strange dream vehicles that take little girls in nightgowns away on nighttime journeys to new worlds. If anything at all happens in this world of deepening somnambulistic sluggishness and hypnotic rigor mortis, it bears the imprint of manic obsession. The iconography of such activities is clearest in the motif of the heaps or cone-shaped mounds of flowers, layers of lawn, discarded furniture, or soil, which are created in garages and living rooms, on roads, in back yards and gardens-enigmatic structures devoid of purpose. As a rule, these "works," with their clearly sculptural features, render the previous home, road, or place completely unusable, but this in no way stops the person from compulsively pursuing his or her activity.
　　
　　This is precisely the context in Steven Spielberg's science-fiction fairy tale Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977). Roy Neary, played by Richard Dreyfuss, is haunted by the vision of a mountain, which he attempts to give shape to in various ways, only in the end to meet friendly aliens on top of this mountain-which indeed exists.In Crewdson's world this motif becomes a metaphor for the obsessive power but also for the destructive single-mindedness of artistic work. He may possibly be portraying his own enormously expensive and time-consuming preparations necessary for realizing the images he has in mind, but this is not clear. In any case, all his works deal with the extravagance and excessiveness of the artist in search of his image. It is therefore quite understandable that Crewdson is interested less in addressing a panoramic range of topics than in constantly intensifying his focus on an established cycle of images. What makes his approach so appealing is that his picture world with its depth-psychological tension is located not in reality, but in the preformed trivial myths of cinematic and literary designs. That instant of recognition we experience when viewing Crewdson's images proves that we have become well and truly accustomed to perceiving the world predominantly through its symbolic surrogates. The degree of saturation with literary and cinematic models, which these picture series reveal, is not a sign of their imitativeness, but rather an acknowledgement of the fact that the existing stock of images is an essential basis for the construction of pictures, which can in turn become models.
　　
　　1 Gregory Crewdson interviewed by Bradford Morrow [1997], Gregory Crewdson. Dream of Life (Salamanca, 2000.), p. 20
　　
　　2 lbid.,p.21.
　　
　　3 See Rick Moody, "On Gregory Crewdson," in Gregory Crewdson. Twilight (New York, 2002), p. 6.
　　
　　4 Morrow 1997 (see note 1), p. 27.
　　
　　5 Ibid., p. 19.
　　
　　6 Cited by Adrian Gargett, "Prozac Nation: The Twilight Photographs of Gregory Crewdson," Get Underground,
　　
　　January 10,2004.
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　
　　美国梦的黑暗面
　　
　　Gregory Crewdson 的照片围绕着一个大主题：渗透在看上去受保护的美丽世界中无法解释地压抑和怪异。他的影象世界是在一种显而易见被称为强迫症的力量驱使下创作出来的，他们被细节化并在长镜头般的描述下永久颠覆。他的照片被精心制作，在这种特殊偏好下超自然现象扮演了一个重要的角色。让人吃惊的是他不认为自己是“美国现实主义风光摄影师”而把自己置于Walker Evans, Carry Winogrand, William Eggleston 之外并归入传统意义上美国日常生活编年史家。然而这个自我描述并不像听上去那样牵强，和情调也无关。他的作品从本质上说是与描绘美国乡村小镇与城市之外的幸存生命联系在一起，精确可靠。虽然生活在纽约但让他感兴趣的不是引人注目的美国，而是隐蔽在连绵山脉中有着柔美风光和质朴木屋的郊区。这些景象在无止尽的印地安那夏季中，被日落的太阳着上了暖色调。就是这样的美国，有着朝向空旷路口的前院，有着摇椅的木制前廊，有着隐喻封建制度的俗气饰物的客厅；几乎所有的事物看上去就像1973年那部《American Graffiti》电影中高中的摸样，就在身边。也因此，这是一个与所概略的美国大相径庭的图片世界，它像是幻觉—一个并非复制于再度创造和完美化的最初世界，而是现实再度呈现后令人信服的最初现实。
　　
　　当外来的概念渗透到这些熟悉的概念后Crewdson缔造了现实主义的灭亡，他巧妙得用肖像研究学的手法把自然景观和美国风光做为关于精神焦虑，恐惧与欲望的隐喻和替代品，这是一个神奇的图像制作过程。 Diane Arbus 描绘了一个黑暗的怪异的美国，而在她之后似乎还没有一个人像 Gregory Crewdson 那样关注非同寻常的事物，这一点使他与Diane Arbus 联系在一起并带来巨大的赞扬。Gregory Crewdson 的影象世界与Cindy Sherman的照片有着更强烈的联系，比如他早期的静物作品和之后的《恐怖剧本》甚至也能和Jeff Wall精致的灯箱照片联系起来。他喜欢用细致入微地现实主义手法制作具有创造性的超现实主义的影像世界并总是关注自然与文明的交集，这与 Jeff Wall 的工作方式很相似。撇开这些相似之处，在别的方面 Whereas Wall 与 Gregory Crewdson 有着本质的不同。 Whereas Wall 主要使用的艺术史题材作为对象，这些照片聚焦于特殊的美国社会冲突，用他具有诱惑力的冷霓虹画面模拟了这些场面。Gregory Crewdson 则向下回到 Hollywood电影中，运用当中的流行的神秘事物创造出间离于电影的关于美国社会的具有建设性的画面；洞悉了收集于美国社会中受损灵魂的最深处。
　　
　　虽然这些传记化的画面有足够的影响力，但更有趣的是从详细的插画中展开的场景。从一开始，Crewdson 就以一种特别的方式理解摄影，既把摄影看作电影的压缩过程。有一个现成的例子，在1986−88年中所拍摄的作品，一些精心构思的小画幅照片展现了他的初衷—用孤独和无法定义的期望所架构的画面。
　　
　　《自然的惊叹》（1992−97）是Crewdson第二个主要系列，精确的表达了他的艺术中另一个重要方面。这组系列是由40张在工作室内拍摄的模型照片所组成，呈现了一个遍布飞鸟，蝴蝶，昆虫的自然世界，这是一个光怪陆离的充满神奇事物的区域。以严谨的角度来看，这些模型世界很清晰的表明它是参照自然历史博物馆中那些微缩场景所建立起来的，但不是为系统学，种类分类，明晰他们内在联系所设计的，而是为了营造一个人类无法领悟的遵循自然规则的世界，在这个规则下自然界最终过渡繁衍并吞噬了人类的空间。这或许被视为关于Apollonian 与Dionysian 之间最基本争论的阐释－引用在此则理性地导致了自然界取得了让人难以理解的胜利。
　　
　　在《自然的惊叹》中让人印象最深刻的那张照片展现了一群飞鸟在一排农屋和靠着梯子的树木的衬托下守护着围成环形的蛋。神秘而完美的对称环是关于这个无法解释的对象的隐喻。无论是否这个由蛋组成的环形是人为摆放，Crewdson 或许是想把依靠着梯子的树木与偷窃联系在一起，又或者是飞鸟所为，甚至异想天开为蛋本身。Crewdson 的作品中圆环以丰富的形式多次出现，在一次访谈中Grewdson指出环形或许是隐喻浪漫痴迷和完美，但不要尝试解开这个谜团，比起把它变得通俗易懂，Crewdson 更喜欢守住他的秘密。这个环形也可以被解读为单一与完美的象征。他的确是在创造一个完美架构的世界，那是一个充满着逼真细节只有用它自己的封闭逻辑才能完全理解的模型世界。摄影之所以成为Crewdson所认为的完美媒体，是因为它能创造出一个“完美世界”。
　　
　　身体力行地去控制完美对于Crewdson来说是非常重要的。对于画面中每个细节的精确计划与建构意味着相机仅仅是纪录了摄影师想让我们看到的东西，没有任何机会让摄影师把在画面之外已经出现的以及他们或许并未发现的东西细节化；这也是为什么他允许自己在画面中呈现一些既惹人注意又不可置信但却显得非常自然的东西，并掩饰那些会被观众发现的破绽。以微观宇宙学的角度切入主题，《自然的奇迹》着重于表现无法控制的自然并使之具体化。这是一个惨杂了魔幻主义和光怪陆离事物的独立存在的自然。Crewdson 毫不掩饰地把经典恐怖美学作为创作元素，这样做是因为能激发人类对于自身肢体碎片最原始的恐惧。尤其是同一系列中后期作品所描绘的长满荆棘的人类肢体（由Crewdson 自己扮演），部分肢体在花丛和过渡繁衍的灌木丛的围绕下淌着血，它们被自然以及动植物混合体所吞噬。这组系列曾经是Crewdson 逃离自身艰难处境的出口，以独立于他自已的角度来看这些照片的话则与David Lynch的电影有着紧密的联系。 在Lynch的电影中恐怖与神秘都隐秘在田园诗般的风景之后， 尤其是那部《蓝丝绒》， 摄影机游移在深深的草丛中并捕捉到一只被撕扯掉的人耳 ，而边上有着缓慢移动中的巴士车队。这与Crewdson创造的那个奇怪混乱的世界有着相同的惊喜，就好似在一眨眼间就从极度地精神分裂的世界中剥离出一只褐色的小鸟。Crewdson常常梦游在高度架构化的图像世界中，这与Lynch对他电影的态度极为吻合，正如Lynch所说：“我想潜入到我制造的梦幻世界中去，那是一个完全由我选择由我控制的世界。”
　　
　　在《圈》这一系列中，Crewdson 做了果断的改变，把创作的内容部分地与1980年代所拍摄的最初系列联系起来且第一次以明确的主题把表达形式固定化并沿用至今。用摄影的方式作为一个深入的心理学研究—试图调查隐藏在美国郊区与小镇中的恐惧，期望与欲望。这个系列他只用黑白来记录，相机以高视角对准了街道与院子的消失点。在这些自然与文明的交界面上他观察到了一名男子在他屋前的路上铺设草皮，黑熊在翻找垃圾桶内的物品，消防员打着让人摸不着头脑的报警电话，被隔离的花园中有多个神秘的同中心圆环，以及一位妇女把花卉的根床有规律地铺设在马路中间。在这些关于混乱与分裂的场景中，照片中的人物是沉默的并且显得陌生冷淡，而这恰恰就是人物的中心特征。他们凝望着之前的事件犹如催眠和失语，恐惧与欢乐都无法打动。 此时他们的小世界正在渐渐溶解。
　　
　　考虑到在《圈》中相对小画幅照片和审慎的黑白效果过分夸大了纪实性， Crewdson在之后创作的《黄昏》《梦幻屋》《玫瑰花下》系列与先前的内容有着全新的面貌—画面更丰富更巴洛克化。他迄今为止最著名的系列《黄昏》被看作之后所有作品的指导概念，那是因为《黄昏》中有着明确的信号，比如街灯所散发的自然光被人工光所替代以及变长的阴影。当理智的力量衰败时也就是幻想编制起他自己故事的那刻，而此时此刻在那副 Goya’s Sleep of Reason and the mosters it produces诞生之前就有了。在Crewdson的影像世界里，隐藏的力量与无法控制的黑暗能量以及不羁的自然已全然进入了人类的家园：一棵拔地而起的树径直横卧在起居室而它几乎没有可能从屋顶那个小洞穿过，一头发育过度的黑熊慢步穿过房间。另一间房中一名男子心急如焚地把草皮一个接一个地堆成圆锥形，起居室的地板已被打穿，恐怖的冷光从地板的深处闪耀而上。那个受保护的巢室也就是人们的房屋在一种力量的统治下失去了他的功能,变得不再安全—这股力量被视为压抑能量。在一个部分贴着瓷砖的整洁的浴室，我们看见一位只穿着内裤的男孩把手臂伸入地板的洞中，他想碰触到浴室下黑暗肮脏的布满了排水管道的地下室，这让我们觉得他剩余的躯体无论怎样都无法超然于浴室之下那条超长的如死尸般苍白的手臂。在此，Crewdson 首次碰触了受压抑的潜意识并把他们搬上舞台意在揭示主角的自我沦陷与间离。
　　
　　在《黄昏》和之后的系列中，Crewdson主要扮演了导演的角色，所有的工作由分工精确的工作人员完成，就像拍摄一部电影。这些照片有些在工作室内完成有些在特定地点拍摄，并花费了数周时间去搭建那些错综复杂的场景，谨慎地计划与构思每一个细节。以这样的方式制作的照片旨在建立一种卓越的电影效果，甚至看上去像一部熟悉的电影，但更为重要的是最终让每个场景看上去都是精心安排过的。Crewdson 用象征意象和片段叙述的手法把大量珍贵的热门电影中出现的神秘事物与他的作品联系起来，并在不计其数的科幻神秘恐怖场景中提炼出他自己的风格。照片中涉及的元素来源于Stephen king的书籍以及Steven Spielberg的《ET-来自外星》（1982）和《第三类接触》（1977）。那部有着忧愁梦幻画面的青春挽歌－《Donnie Darko》 描绘了关于时光幻觉的哲学，它在成为一部cult电影的同时也清楚地与Crewdson的意象画上了等号。比如，刚刚在恶梦醒来之后离开房间的一个男孩就在卧室中停止了移动，同时飞机的引擎正在碾碎屋子的房顶。
　　
　　由Rod Serling撰写，在1959年至1965年期间由CBS播出的的电视剧《黄昏地带》表现了许多同样在Crewdson作品中出现情绪,关于存在与离奇—作品的精髓与伟大的美国自然主义者Ray Bradbury有着相似的特征—鲜明的黑暗倾向。Crewdson 的作品与他的小说《Somthing Wicked This Way Comes》（1962）一样集中体现了无法归类的混合了科幻，梦幻，恐怖，童话的元素。小说真实地描绘了伊利诺伊州一个名叫绿镇的小城，但它的故事线是虚构的，这在Crewdson的系列中也能明确看到。Bradbury正是在一个寒冷的秋夜来到了那个小镇并被那里的居民深深吸引，他以寓言的方式呈现了“黑暗”与“另类”。Crewdson 的作品也围绕着这两个点，他们传递的是同一种情绪—在童话，荒诞，以及中立视点反复徘徊，在梦幻与现实间拾起人们想看的他们想说的东西。
　　
　　Crewdson 称自己的照片为“单画幅电影”，这一特征因《梦幻之屋》（2002）的诞生而变得显而易见。这组照片全部在Rutland,Vermont的一间空屋内完成，Crewdson 动用了屋内所有的家具与陈设。他聚集了在好莱坞声名显赫的人物，如Gwyneth Paltrow,William H.Macy,Julianne Moore,以及PHilip Seymour作为创做班底，这些全明星阵容给他的照片带来了惊人的效果。因为这样的影像已在电影中出现，演员的脸部是固定的集体记忆并惨杂了由自向症引发的孤独感——联想到Edward Hopper所创造的丰富并具有可信的故事脉络——明星的参与让人们觉得由Crewdson营造的看似虚假的场景已转变为电影院中的神化，虽然这种做法本身就是虚幻的。这一组系列，就像他所做的一切意在展示每一张照片的成型都是抄袭所为。
　　
　　《黄昏》与《 玫瑰花下》重复演绎了相对小规模化的主题。就如Crewdson所有作品那样都无法精确地被归类于地理学或是世俗中，但作品的确塑造了一个不再有着21克灵魂的美国人。在此背景下，赤身裸体的妇女沉默在拖车的车门边又或是迷失在卧室里，就像是一个符号一个无法挽救的失乐园。Crewdson 再次的把时间停止在车前，那是辆被遗弃在某个小镇上车门敞开的小车——伟大的想要向西征服世界的美国梦，却在这辆无法动弹的汽车中那个孤寂的座位上粉碎了。美国人是至高无上的自由个体，他们在一个装有空调的胶囊内控制着自己的身体和之外的世界，但都已变得孤独和脆弱。瓢泼大雨下，在一个匿名小镇的主干道中央停靠着一辆车，一名男子站在车前，伸开双手宿命地凝视着前面的土地。另一张照片中那些看似被催眠的居民在狂热匆忙中打碎了墙壁和地板，为了寻找隐藏在背后的答案与解释，但最终他们遇到的是自己是痛苦，而电视屏幕上显示的恰恰是雪花般的信号杂音——以同样的方式破坏了其内部结构。如噩梦般的森林同样被绝望和无尽的反复所占领：车灯照亮了一名男子，他匆忙地在地上的大窟窿中挖寻出大量的皮包和箱子。这是一次个人与“不可告人之事”的邂逅，以此隐喻自身无法面对的真正的挑战——皮包和箱子就塞子一样，我们甚至无法知道他们真的是在挖寻什么又或是在埋葬他们自己。在这个世界上，那个不稳定已经成为普遍的经历，监护人的法律已不再提供任何的保护：警察和消防员蛊惑于无法解释的灵异事件中，像一个无助的帮助者。他们企图以一种象征性的姿态去扑灭那场火，抓住那个纵火犯。无奈，他们的徒劳是显而易见的。就连那些呈温暖的黄色调，外观过时的学校的巴士都成为了传统美国印象的真正典范，舒适可靠——他们成了永远都不再回到学校的巴士，谎言被推翻在公路上，又或者变成了在奇怪梦境中的汽车，带上穿着睡衣的小女孩在夜晚开始了驶向新世界的旅程。如果任何事情都有可能发生在这个世界上的话，那么无精打采的深度梦游症，催眠后的僵尸将会呈现出被狂热迷恋的迹象。很明显这是把残旧的带着装饰图案的汽车，堆成圆锥形的花山，层层叠叠的草皮，废弃的家具 ，或是沙砾肖像化了，他们创造于车库内，起居室里，公路上，后院的花园中——就像神秘的缺乏目的的举动。这些“工程”就如规则般清晰地塑造出他们的面貌，使以前的家园，道路完全不能使用，但这依然无法把他或她从他们所狂热追寻的事情中停止下来。
　　
　　这与Steven Spielberg的科幻童话《第三类接触》（1977）有着恰当的意境，由Richard Dreyfuss扮演的Roy Neary 被困在一座会产生幻象的山中，他用了多种方法企图逃离那座山，最终他发现山中的确有着外星人并在山顶遇见了有好的他们。在Crewdson的世界中这样的图腾是对于权利迷恋症的比喻，同样也隐喻具有破坏性的单一意图的艺术作品。他可能为了塑造自己脑中已经存在的影像而去做任何必要的准备，这一过程消耗了巨大的财力和时间，但此举的真实性并不清楚。在任何情况下 ，他所做的一切与艺术家这一形象联系在一起，那是一个为了追寻自己的影像而过度奢侈的艺术家。也因此，可以完全理解Crewdson在处理一个覆盖范围宽泛的主题时显得缺乏兴趣，他更喜欢把重点放在不断建立体系化的影像。他的具有深度心里紧张情绪的照片是基于非现实世界的，这是一个让照片更具吸引力的方法，但这一切已在琐碎的电影化的虚构和文学意向中预先形成。 当我们看见Crewdson的影像时我们见证了那个认识的瞬间——这一瞬间证明了我们已完全完全习惯于去感知这个世界——主要通过具有象征性的替代品。这一系列饱含了文学与电影模式的照片想要揭示的不是他们所要模仿的符号，而是去承认这一事实，既库存充足的影像是构建起图片的必不可少的基础，这反过来可以成为一个典范。

4人推荐   

2007-12-29 01:39:05 made (上海) 　　这是一种我们无法企及的摄影姿态 > 删除

2007-12-29 02:03:36 胡椒 　　。。。又一篇出炉。。 > 删除

2007-12-29 02:08:43 hocried┃用力去生活 (北京) 　　看得速度赶不上你翻的速度。。。。。。 　　 　　 　　我消化太困难。。。。 　　 　　打印出来看。。。。 > 删除

2007-12-29 10:42:21 叶列豆 (上海) 　　哦，关于Crewdson的这篇终于翻完拉，大工程呀 > 删除

2007-12-29 10:52:48 k1973 (哈尔滨) 　　厉害，下了不少功夫吧！ > 删除

2007-12-29 17:04:28 奔驰 (上海) 　　谢谢 马达的翻译 　　 　　在马几克家翻过他的画册 　　 　　画册后面收录了一些他的工作照 拍摄现场和好莱坞大片现场几乎没有区别 　　 　　想起老马对我说过的一句话：艺术不是穷孩子玩的…… > 删除

2007-12-29 23:52:24 马几克 (上海) 　　看了你的文章，把画册又看了一遍。感觉从造型的成就上讲，他要好于jeff wall，Philip-Lorca DiCorcia 等同时代的艺术家。而他们这批人，又要好于第一代的彩色摄影大师，如William Eggleston、STEPHEN SHORE、Joel Sternfeld。 　　 　　毕竟是下了血本精心安排的。但他的主题太过于阴暗，不够含蓄，这是我所不喜欢的。现在对Hannah Starkey产生浓厚兴趣，我认为是在Gregory Crewdson这批人的成就上的新的延续。 　　 　　有句话的翻译似乎有些疑问，探讨一下： 　　 　　Given his preference for elaborately produced photographs, in which the supernatural plays a central role, it may come as a surprise that Crewdson refers to himself as an "American realist landscape photographer"' and thus places himself in the tradition of the great chroniclers of everyday American life from Walker Evans to Carry Winogrand and William Eggleston. 　　 　　意思是不是应该是他认为他延续的是Walker Evans to Carry Winogrand and William Eggleston这一派的现实主义风光摄影师的传统。其实我觉得他有些过于语出惊人了。延续那一派的应该是Alec Soth才对。而他的水平应该在Alec Soth之上。 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 > 删除

2007-12-30 03:49:08 made (上海) 　　马几克的意思是对的 　　refer被我看闪了 > 删除

2007-12-30 03:49:37 叶列豆 (上海) 　　Given his preference for elaborately produced photographs, in which the supernatural plays a central role, it may come as a surprise that Crewdson refers to himself as an "American realist landscape photographer"' and thus places himself in the tradition of the great chroniclers of everyday American life from Walker Evans to Carry Winogrand and William Eggleston. 　　　　　　　　　　　　 　　　　不大明白摄影词汇，但觉得楼上说的很有道理。大致翻了一下我理解的意思： 　　　　　　　　　　　　 　　　　由于他很钟爱被精心布景后拍下的照片，而这种超自然的手法也占据了他摄影方式的中心位置，那么Crewdson 自认是一个美国现实主义风光摄影师并因而把自己置于是延续Walker Evans 到 Carry Winogrand，William Eggleston等记录美国日常生活的大师之后是让人意外的。 　　　　　　　　 　　　“tradition”应该强调的是一段时间内的形成的文化传统、侧重文化沉淀，有种一代代沉淀的感觉挖 > 删除

2007-12-30 04:07:48 made (上海) 　　写评论的Stephan Berg的确把Crewdson拔的很高,但让我好奇的是Crewdson如何从早期唯美的萤火虫系列发展到布满黑暗阴郁的大画幅系列,文章中并未提到. > 删除

2007-12-30 06:53:46 Bloodypixy (Memphis) 　　我觉得他黑暗的照片是他本身就有的，早期可能还不够明显。他父亲是一个心理医生，他的诊所就在家里的地下室，CREWDSON小时候最大的爱后就是趴在地板上听那些病人的治疗。这段经历在那张小男孩把手伸到地下的照片中大概最能体现。 > 删除

2007-12-30 23:41:48 马几克 (上海) 　　再分析一下那句评论,也许是对realist的理解有歧义。 　　 　　CREWDSON的摄影场面尽管是人为安排的，但拍摄手法却可以说是如实反映的。也就是说场面安排完成后，拍摄却是如实记录的。拟真，而不是通过明显的虚假来达到某种意义的表达。这也是我的猜测。 　　 　　pixy在美国，是不是能帮我们多介绍些理论界的动向呢？ 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 　　 > 删除

2007-12-30 23:49:14 此人已注销 　　我认为这篇是豆瓣所有摄影小组里最专业最深刻的讨论了。哈哈。英语水平有限，完全看不懂那个了。哈哈 > 删除

2007-12-31 01:32:59 made (上海) 　　我今天听stan说Crewdson的照片是经过数码处理的,而且改动很大. > 删除

2007-12-31 05:11:38 Bloodypixy (Memphis) 　　我觉得那段重点应该是everyday American life。我摄影史中就是拿他和Philip-Lorca diCorcia。我和搭档一致认为，尽管他的照片，场景是超现实，但是对于主人公的刻画，似乎可以让人真实体会到他们的内心思想，而diCorcia的照片则相反，往往是很普通一个场景，但是永远无法猜到他们内心想什么。另外值得注意的是，CREWDSON首先是个完美主义者，他说他拍照总是要尽力让画面完美。把他和电影导演比较可能更有可能。比如斯皮尔伯格和大卫林奇。 > 删除

2007-12-31 10:34:24 奔驰 (上海) 　　2007-12-31 01:32:59 made 　　我今天听stan说Crewdson的照片是经过数码处理的,而且改动很大. 　　 　　--------------------------------- 　　 　　何止 Crewdson 的照片,连JEFF WALL的有些照片都经过后期数码处理,因为那些看上普通的照片 无法通过一次或者多次暴光来达到效果,只有靠后期的电脑来进行拼接。只不过人家技术好，没让你看出痕迹来。 > 删除

2008-01-02 22:44:57 石头 (宁波) 　　该在你家多翻画册啊。 　　Gregory Crewdson必然做过数码处理，但是这样的处理很有道理也很负责。 > 删除

2008-01-30 17:53:04 灰穹 (北京) 　　我也被画册后面的工作照吓到了，他不是一个人～～ > 删除

2008-02-25 03:01:03 调过漆 (北京) 　　是啊我第一次看jeff wall的画册时也在想他到底时怎么做到的，结果翻到最后making off的部分发现人家基本是在拍电影。。。。 　　 　　我同意上面的说法，有时候这种处理手法反而会比传统纪实手段更接近事实。因为传统的pure documentary可能只抓到现实的一个片面的瞬间，反而有了偏差。通常用摆拍手法来纪实的是为了更接近真实的本来面目吧。 　　 　　文章down下来了回去慢慢看，谢谢楼主为人民服务～ > 删除

2008-02-25 03:25:54 调过漆 (北京) 　　刚好看到马修·巴尼的评论，这句话很有意思：作品反映了九十年代后期国际当代艺术的一个代表倾向：时髦漂亮的色调、虚构的视觉形象和精神分裂的表现内容。 > 删除

2008-03-02 03:00:53 Bloodypixy (Memphis) 　　http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/ > 删除

2008-03-02 04:00:17 Phoebe Jin (Vancouver) 　　Thanks. Pixy。 > 删除

2008-03-02 12:55:57 SE影师童梦 (北京) 　　让我在盲目的追求中停顿 让我在狂乱的现实中冷静 　　冷静 才能认清方向 认清方向才值得去追求 > 删除

2008-03-06 18:37:49 SE影师童梦 (北京) 　　再次来此 再次反省 > 删除

2008-05-07 06:09:03 调过漆 (北京) 　　他来伦敦办个展了，这周去看！ > 删除

2008-05-08 19:15:42 没有感觉 (北京) 　　Thanks. > 删除

2008-05-11 17:58:40 调过漆 (北京) 　　今天去看了他的展览，照片印很大所以有机会看细节。之前看过他的纪录片，那完全就是拍电影的架势，他说他就是一个导演，甚至有时候快门都干脆是他助手来按的。片子里他拿着喇叭指挥调度，每一个细节都是特意安排的，甚至路边咖啡馆里的某个女客人等等。然后后期再由专业的工作室一点一点修到光线、颜色都完美。这回看作品，细节真的很多，放很大颗粒很重，不过整体效果依旧很好。 > 删除

2008-05-11 23:38:12 调过漆 (北京) 　　http://www.whitecube.com/exhibitions/crew/video/15/ 　　这是他自己阐述展览作品的视频 > 删除

2008-06-05 03:58:43 eighthday (New York City) 　　 Gregory Crewdson's photography revolves around a single large theme: the penetration of the repressed, eerie, and Inexplicable into a supposedly protected, pretty world. 　　 　　Gregory Crewdson 的照片围绕着一个大主题：渗透在看上去受保护的美丽世界中无法解释地压抑和怪异。 　　 　　第一句翻译的有点拧巴, 我的理解是：从那些压抑的、诡异的、不可言说的（环境中）穿越到一个似乎是受保护的美丽世界里。 　　 　　我觉得这个概括很准确。他其实是在黑暗里营造一种温暖的解脱。和Angela Strassheim 的 Left Behind有类似的情绪，都是对美国保守愚昧又天真的传统文化的理性上的挣脱和审视。但情感的纽带却不可能彻底割断，审视的另一面是眷恋，所以才会有继承Eggleston之说。 　　 　　 　　 > 删除