WEEK#3 Seminar

Gregory Crewdson's Photo Alchemy

Crewdson has reinvented the idea of photography by using film techniques to stage pictures. Instead of just photographing a scene, he creates and stages the scene. I find Crewdson's photography extremely alluring as there is always a sense of mystery, darkness and ghostliness to them. These scenes often occur in ordinary settings but there is always something unsettling or out of place depicted. 

This photo depicts a woman floating in a flooded living room. It appears to be a small house with contemporary furniture and a staircase leading upstairs - what seems to be an ordinary interior setting, except that it is flooded with water. The woman floating lifelessly on the water gives the painting a haunted feeling, forcing the viewer to question what had happened before and after this scene. It was this moment that hovers between before and after that interests Crewdson. Each photo is polished and technically perfect but still somewhat undone, and this gap is filled by the viewer's imagination. The ultimate meaning still remains a mystery as each person has a different interpretation to the same image.

There is very little that is actually happening in these pictures. There is a very small narrative as photography has a much smaller narrative capacity than that from other literary forms. It depicts an isolated frozen moment, which limits him to choose only one moment to convey a narrative arc. What makes the picture powerful is that that moment is transformed by light and colour. The lighting is theatrical, colours are vivid and unreal, contributing to the drama and mystery of the painting.

Ways of Seeing Chapter #1 by John Berger

When we take a snapshot, we are detaching an appearance from its place and time and preserving it. I found it interesting how the author spoke of how each image embodies a way of seeing. The composition of a photograph describes and reflects the angle in which the photographer was standing while this photo was taken, and what he/she has chosen to capture within the frame of the image, selecting that sight from an infinity of possibilities. Images were first used to capture and preserve a moment, later it showed how something or someone had once looked. Eventually, an image became a record or a reflection of how the image maker saw the subject as the interest in Humanism and the importance of the individual began to rise. 

Images are powerful communicators, stronger than literature as there are things we cannot describe that images can illustrate. The power that these images have also mystifies viewers rather than to clarify. It is impossible for us to know exactly the history behind a painting, the artist is really the only one who knows exactly what was happening at the time the painting was made. The way other people look at it is never the same, as they are affected by learnt assumptions about art and make their own conclusions as supposed to the truth. 

The invention of the camera was an enormous breakthrough and has manipulated the way we see art today. It destroyed the idea that images were timeless. We are now able to reproduce art and almost anyone is able to view it, not solely for the eyes of the elite as it was in the past. The invention of the camera has allowed art to be brought into the homes of the viewer through printing and reproduction, thus modifying its entire meaning. Reproduction has also destroyed the idea of uniqueness and authenticity. Instead of the viewer having to travel to see a piece of art, the image travels to the viewer via technology, images that are printed on postcards, t-shirts and posters. Because of reproduction, arts value has been placed aesthetically on a different level than before. For the first time, art has become available, valueless and free. They have entered the mainstream of life and no longer have power in themselves.

Because of reproduction, we no longer look at art for its unique meaning, but for what it uniquely is.. The market value and popularity of an art piece change the way we see it. As a result, we fail to look at it innocently as well as to make our own judgements as we are made to conform to how the public sees it because of its fame.  Its market price is said to be a reflection of its spiritual value, and it becomes an object for which its value depends on its rarity, not its symbolism.