Gregory Crewdson: Eveningside

Exceptionally devoted to creating the most visually striking and mysterious photograph possible, Gregory Crewdson is an innovator in large-scale photography.

He has developed a distinct artistic language over the last three decades — exploring intriguing fictions and his uncanny imagination through hand-constructed dioramas, staged subjects, intricately-crafted interiors, cinematic lighting, special effects, and carefully-selected natural and urban landscapes in the Northeastern United States.

Each image in Crewdson’s latest series Eveningside is fabricated with expansive production teams and lighting crews akin to those used in cinematography. Unlike theatrical films, Crewdson’s finished photographs capture only one small moment of a fictional event, never divulging what occurred before or after. At the core of Crewdson’s work, it is essential that the implications behind each image remain unrestricted, that each viewer experiences the picture with their own narratives.

The Taubman Museum of Art is pleased to exhibit a selection of works from Eveningside (2021-2022), a series of black-and-white photographs depicting the unassuming residents of a surreal American town. In this series, Crewdson uses light and tone to create images with melancholic atmospheres that connect with traditions of black-and-white photography and the history of film noir. The images reveal the photographer’s ongoing interest in the intersections of loneliness and beauty, unexpected wonder, and peculiarity of everyday life.