"The Most Beautiful, Perfect Moment Possible"

While I stayed home and wrote about '70s films, the Significant Other went out last week to watch NYT art critic Michael Kimmelman interview Gregory Crewdson, one of our favorite photographers--and no stranger to NYT magazine readers. He spoke about growing up in a Park Slope brownstone, trying to eavesdrop through the floor on the analysis sessions in his father's basement psychiatry office, then of falling into photography because of a college crush. After continued study at Yale, he moved to a small town in western Massachusetts and began exploring what he called "a style between documentary photo style and the cinematic approach."

Eventually the documentary element faded: "I became interested in more artificial lighting in everyday life and more fantastic images," while "the photos themselves were becoming overly familiar to me." Unsure where to go next, he eventually settled upon elaborately crafted tableaux. "Even though my pictures are very highly produced," he observed, "on some level I consider myself a realist. I want to create a sort of transparent world. I consider myself a psychological realist--trying to portray an inner reality by way of something tangible." Over the last few years, the Significant Other and I have become more and more convinced that he's getting it right--and while these online images are okay, and the books even better, you really do have to see an installation (if you can) and view the prints at their fullest size.

The S.O. took such good notes that I don't feel quite as bad about missing the conversation--too bad I'm not going to be able to send her out again when Kimmelman turns his attention to Sally Mann at Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art in two weeks.