Noted photographer to give Malloy Lecture

It has been said that artist Gregory Crewdson doesn’t take pictures – he makes them, and in the process is reinventing the genre. He will discuss his photographs and artistic process when he gives the Malloy Visiting Artist Lecture Feb. 22.

Photographer Gregory Crewdson will present the Malloy Visiting Artist Lecture at Skidmore College on Friday, Feb. 22. Free and open to the public, the illustrated lecture will start at 6 p.m. in Filene Recital Hall, in the Filene Building.

Crewdson is known for producing “large-scale, elaborately constructed photographs taken in and around the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where the Crewdson family has forever had a small log cabin in the woods,” according to a 2008 New York magazine story.

A 2006 NPR feature explained, “Gregory Crewdson doesn't so much take pictures as make them. Some critics say the photographer and artist is reinventing the genre by using film techniques to stage pictures....”

The story continued, “It’s the moment between then and now that interests Crewdson -- he likes that photography limits him to choose only one moment to convey a narrative arc. Each photo is polished and technically perfect, but still somewhat undone. The viewer must imagine what comes before and after.”

Crewdson received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1985 and an M.F.A. in photography from Yale in 1988. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York City. He is an adjunct professor in the Graduate Photography Program at the Yale University School of Art.

A 2012 documentary titled Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters by Ben Shapiro was named a critics pick by The New York Times.

His work has been included in many public collections, most notably the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A retrospective of his work, spanning his career from 1985-2005 was shown as a traveling exhibition from 2005-2008 at major museums around Europe. Another traveling exhibition was featured in February 2011 at the Kulturhuset Museum, Stockholm, followed by Sorte Diamant, Copenhagen and Berlin, among others.

His many awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Photography, a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship, and the Aaron Siskind Fellowship.

Crewdson has published several books of his photographs including Hover with ArtSpace Books; Dream of Life with the University of Salamanca, Spain; Twilight and Beneath the Roses with Abrams; and a retrospective book of his work, titled Gregory Crewdson from 1985 to 2005, published by Hatje Cantz.

Skidmore’s Malloy Visiting Artist Lecture Series annually brings to campus a distinguished contemporary artist of international stature. The series is endowed by artist Susan Rabinowitz Malloy, who earned a B.S. degree.

(Cover photo: “Untitled” 2006, by Gregory Crewdson, copyright Gregory Crewdson, courtesy Gagosian Gallery.)