by Ari Stein in New Photography on Friday 25 April 2008

As a teenager, Gregory Crewdson was part of a punk rock group called The Speedies, Park Slope rockers that hit the New York scene in the early 80s. Their hit song, Let Me Take Your Foto, proved to be prophetic for Crewdson. He is now one of the great modern photographers, who seems to picture things in his head and bring them to life. His new book, Beneath The Flowers, is an in-depth overview of the last five years of his work — which is dark, imaginative, mysterious, cinematic and always pushing the boundaries. Crewdson’s cinematic eye details loss and life-changing events in people’s lives. He is one of the few photographers out there who sets up his photoshoots like a film set, built from scratch to finish. They could be as simple as a man standing beside his car in the twilight or even a landscape portrait of a small urban American town. But Crewdson always manages to instill a sense of instability and uneasiness in you.
Gregory Crewdson