Gregory Crewdson

This image is apart of Gregory Crewdson's project Brief Encounters. The image is of a woman who appears to be lifeless laying in her living room. Beneath her is several inches of water that she is floating upon. The room is perhaps not the cleanest and she is also alone.

Crewdson's father was a psychoanalyst and therefore he was never allowed to know about his father's work. Therefore he felt isolated from his father and many of images convey that. Knowing that he felt isolated from his father, you can see that through this work. Here lies a young woman who is stripped to what appears to be a night gown and is lying by herself.  What I really love about this image is that it reminds me of the drowning scene from Hamlet, when Ophelia commits suicide.

Crewdson uses the light to reflect off her white gown and it really highlights that she is laying there. It gives off a nice contrast of the murky water that is beneath her. It could also help symbolize that she is seeping into darkness.

In the documentary, Brief Encounter, it showed how Crewdson ritually took on his projects. One thing that stuck with me was that he mentioned was that he went location scouting. While location scouting he would drive by the same area many times and when he finally found the spot he was looking for, he took in the scenery with his memory because he did not bring a camera to his locations to take pictures.