Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson studied at Yale University, State University of New York at Purchase and Yale School of Art. The field of work recorded is photography. Residence is recorded at Brooklyn and Park Slope. Employment is recorded with Yale University, Yale School of Art and Vassar College. Work by Gregory Crewdson is recorded in the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Art Institute of Chicago, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, National Gallery of Victoria and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. As a child, he attended Brooklyn Friends School, and then John Dewey High School. As a teenager, he was part of a power pop group called Speedies. Their song "Let Me Take Your Photo" was used in 2005 by Hewlett-Packard in advertisements to promote its digital cameras. Crewdson attended Purchase College, State University of New York, where he initially planned to study psychology. At Purchase, he enrolled in a photography course taught by Laurie Simmons and also studied with Jan Groover. He received an MFA in photography from the Yale School of Art.

Crewdson is a professor and the director of graduate studies in photography at Yale School of Art. Crewdson's photographs are elaborately planned, produced, and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production who light large scenes using cinema production equipment and techniques. He works with a lighting team, art director, make-up and wardrobe department, props and effects to create mood, atmosphere, and open-ended narrative images. He has worked with the same director of photography, Richard Sands, along with other core team members, for some 25 years. He works much like a director with a budget similar to that of a movie production, each image involves dozens of people and weeks to months of planning. Using shots that resemble film productions, Crewdson deconstructs American suburban life in his work. He has cited the films Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe as having influenced his style, as well as the painter Edward Hopper and photographer Diane Arbus. Crewdson's most widely-known bodies of work include Twilight (1998–2002), Beneath the Roses (2003–2008), Cathedral of the Pines (2013–2014), An Eclipse of Moths (2018–2019), and Eveningside (2021–2022). Crewdson's only body of work made outside of the U.S. was Sanctuary (2009), set at the Cinecittà studios in Rome. Nearly all of his other work before and since was made in the small towns and cities in Western Massachusetts. In 2012, he was the subject of the feature documentary film Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. The film series followed the construction of and an explanation by Crewdson of his thought process and vision for pieces of Beneath the Roses.

As of 2020, Crewdson lives primarily in western Massachusetts in a former Methodist church. His long time partner, Juliane Hiam, is a writer and producer, and the two work closely together. Hiam has also appeared as a subject in numerous of Crewdson's pictures. Crewdson has two children from a previous marriage. Crewdson is an open-water swimmer and has said that the meditative state he achieves with his daily swimming practice is fundamental to his creative process as an artist.

Crewdson's work is held in the permanent collections of major institutions worldwide, including: Albertina Museum, Vienna The Broad, Los Angeles The Getty Museum, Los Angeles Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, New York San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Victoria and Albert Museum, London Whitney Museum, New York Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven