Gregory Crewdson

Forrest Muelrath interviews Josefina Ayerza

FM: Crewdson’s father was a psychoanalyst who had a practice inside their Brooklyn home. The artist has said that he used to eavesdrop on his father’s sessions when he was a small child. Do you see this influence in his work?

JA: Well, that’s a naughty thing to do! Poor patients and poor father. However I can imagine the thrill of a small boy lis- tening to grown-up stories, without the filter typically used in the presence of a child. He probably did not understand it all—the child’s references are limited. But in time, like with the Wolfman, the child may work images and words out, and arrive at conclusions he wasn’t able to decode when he originally heard them. The scene of the child spying through a hole in the floor has the structure of perversion. He’s the voyeur, now the father is an exhibitionist. What I can trace in the artist’s photography is the exposure of intimacy—anger, sadness, nudity, drama at the point of conflict. The artists is the exhibitionist and we are the voyeurs.[...]

More Crewdson images here, here and here.