"The world is either beautiful or ugly depending on who views it." Kai.

My Chosen Image

Gregory Crewdson.




Untitled (Beneath the Roses)

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, Summer 2003, Digital C-print, (Man in Woods from Beneath the Roses), 64 1/4 X 94 1/4 inches, (163.2 X 239.4 cm)

This image is in part of a set of images intituled “Beneath the roses”. This image is by Gregory Crewdson. This image inspired me by his images because they are capturing a possible reality of someone’s life but the reality is more enhanced with a film aspect. In other words the images look like they have been taken out of a film about the shady lives of America. Gregory Crewdson pushes the boundaries of the American dream in these set of images (beneath the roses) by distorting the idea of having a perfect life, a simple job with the ideal perfect family and the little white picket fence.



This image is a constructed and staged image of reality and secrets in American life and behind closed doors. The fact that the image is called “Beneath the roses” implies the thought that there is something beneath the perfect rose bed and that we all have dark secrets. The image follows quite strongly to the rule of thirds. The tow trees at either side of the hole are parallel to the columns on the line of thirds. The man seems to be in the middle square of the rule of thirds. The main key light is coming from the car heads lights on camera left, there is a second source of light from the forest behind at camera right off screen. It is a very strong light so it does not define a lot of his features and leaves him quite bright and exposed. Gregory Crewdsons work always implies a sense of nostalgia and a deeper imprinting or social construction in America.

“What is it about Gregory Crewdson's images of small town American life that is so delicious? It is because they evoke a fantasia of absent memories? A fluorescent light flickering over a beige motel bathroom, a misty woodland, a lone stranger waiting to catch our gaze, or the orange glow of the distant, vacant phone box of our collective unconscious? Comfortably shelved in our minds, images of this nature have an instant appeal, and we need little encouragement to re-visit them and reminisce.” by Erica MacArthur. http://www.artreview.com/forum/topic/show?id=1474022%3ATopic%3A197739

This reviewer seem to pick up on the same concepts about the secrete in American life.