Gregory Crewdson – Photographs 1985–2005

Fotomuseum Winterthur presents the bewitchingly beautiful and at the same time disquieting work of the American photographer Gregory Crewdson, who was born in New York in 1962, in the form of a large-scale overview with all his important blocks of work, including the new series Beneath the Roses that brings us close to his twilight world in incredible detail.

Against the backdrop of suburban America, and referring directly to the myths of the Hollywood cinema, Crewdson has dealt with the neuroses, anxieties and secret desires of a society looking into the bottomless abyss of its own psyche since the mid-1980s. Since the series entitled Twilight, he has been making his intricate, perfectly beautiful staged photographs on film-like sets, some of them in the studio, some on location, with a large crew after weeks of extensive preparation. An influential teacher at Yale himself, Crewdson's work consists largely of realistic descriptions of rural America. But with his use of theatrical lighting, employment of fantastic and enchanted elements and belief in a broad narrative style, he has further developed the tradition of staged photography, which – since Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall at the very latest – has become one of the most important means of expression in contemporary photography.