Friday, 17 January 2014

Directions Unit- Gregory Crewdson Research

In preparation for beginning the creation of my Sound Piece based on the Photographer Gregory Crewdson's piece of work; "House Fire", I decided to do some research about the man himself, so that I may possibly gain a better understanding about what exactly goes through his head when he takes his photographs.
My hope in doing this was that I would somehow be able to take any kind of vision or idea he had about what story was being told at the time and make it a semi-reality by adding pieces of sound and in effect re-telling the story.
My research mostly consisted of reading articles and interviews online from sites such as The American Reader. Although these articles gave me an idea about how Crewdson operates when deciding to capture an image, and the process of choosing shoot locations and such before actually creating any pieces of work, I couldn't find much in terms of any ideas for a story he had going through his head when doing so. Although I do have an idea as to why this is.
In the linked article I have provided to The American Reader interview, Crewdson uses phrases such as;
"I don't want there to be a conscious awareness of any kind of literal narrative. And that's why I don't really try to pump up motivation or plot or anything like that."
and
"That way, the viewer is more likely to project their own narrative onto the picture."
What I can deduce from statements like this is that Crewdson doesn't really have any desired plots or story-lines when he captures his images, and instead simply creates surreal and strange environments for his subjects to exist in, and leave the actual interpretation of what is going on to the viewer.
In a way, this lack of plot information with his photographs is a good thing for me, as it allows me a lot more creative freedom when making my sound-piece as I am not restricted by any set story-line. 

Relating this back to the photograph I will be working with; "House Fire", I have not actually come up with my own plot or interpretation of what is happening in the photograph, but I am hoping that through the editing process and the sourcing of sound effects to use I will be able to use for this project, more ideas will come to me.

I have also learnt from an online article that there exists a documentary about Crewdson and his work called; Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. I am hoping to get a copy of this documentary or view it online and see if I can learn anything more about his work that way.

No comments:

Post a Comment