Tag: Photography

In tandem with his first-ever retrospective at the Albertina, a new book pairs the prolific photographer’s work with writings from directors David Fincher and Matthieu Orléan, and novelist Emily St. John Mandel, among others.

Maggie Coughlan
August 7, 2024
Vanity Fair

“I’ve always said that I think every artist has one central story to tell,” photographer Gregory Crewdson says on a call from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he lives and works. “And they circle around that story, over and over again, over a lifetime, reinventing aspects of it and challenging others and trying to push things forward. But at the core of it, it’s like the central preoccupations remain fixed.”

The concept is particularly timely for the photographer, who for the past three-and-a-half decades has been constructing gripping images that call to mind film stills, as his first-ever retrospective opened in May at the Albertina in Vienna. Later this month, the eponymous exhibition takes new form with the release of Gregory Crewdson, its 280-page catalogue edited by the Albertina’s chief curator of photography Walter Moser and published by Prestel. The book features more than 300 photographs and production stills that examine the complexities of American suburbia, be it through someone wandering a parking lot, shirtless and unmoored, or a twosome’s forlorn gazes into a television as its glow illuminates a basement, paired with writings from directors David Fincher and Matthieu Orléan, and novelist Emily St. John Mandel, among others.

Gregory Crewdson – Walter Moser, Editor (Prestel, 2024)

For Crewdson, the process of revisiting nearly 40 years of work was “complicated,” but led him to draw parallels between his earliest endeavors and present-day work. “It’s interesting in that on some basic level everything’s changed and then on another level, nothing’s changed really,” he says. “When I look back at pictures I made when I was in graduate school, [those are] the first pictures in the show, they’re not that dissimilar in terms of the basic concerns—on a much more modest scale, of course.”

In advance of the catalogue’s release, Crewdson spoke with Vanity Fair about the possibility of making the switch from photography to directing feature-length films, and the story he’s been telling all these years.

Read the full interview

A sample of the writing by David Fincher, “A Difficult Truth”:

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Buy the book through the publisher

February 2022
MACK (UK, EU)

‘Shore’s work has been a personal inspiration from my earliest interaction with it. With Modern Instances, I am humbled to have his profound insight into the rigorous over-thinking that made it possible. This insight, delivered with such clarity, grace, and humility, will no doubt affect how you make or appreciate photographs – it might even alter how you see.’ David Fincher

‘Shore’s memoir is as riveting as it is illuminating – an almost deceptively seamless narrative of experiences, associations, correspondences, images, and remarkable erudition that testify to the mind’s eye through which, from the beginning of his career, Shore has transformed the seemingly spontaneous configurations of his photography into profound works of art.’ Jane Kramer

‘Modern Instances is like a conversation among friends. It reveals a deeply inquiring mind, and renders making photographs, and looking at them, one of the most exciting and humane of pursuits.’ Sandra Phillips

‘Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life.’ Giorgio de Chirico

Stephen Shore’s Modern Instances: The Craft of Photography is an experimental new memoir from one of the world’s most prolific artists — an impressionistic scrapbook that documents the rich and surprising touchstones that make up over half a century of ground-breaking work. With essays, photographs, stories, and excerpts that draw on Shore’s decades of teaching, this is an essential handbook for anyone interested in learning more about mastering one’s craft and the distinct threads that come together to inform a creative voice. As much as offering meditation on the influences of a single artist, Modern Instances proposes a new way of thinking about the world around us, in which even the smallest moment can become a source of boundless inspiration — if only we pay attention.

Silkscreen printed linen hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-913620-53-0
Dimensions: 17 x 24.5cm
Page Count: 224 pages
Price: €38 / £30 / $45

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