Dixon Steele

"I was born when she kissed me.I died when she left me.

I lived a few weeks while she loved me."

8

These words come from screenwriter Dixon Steele, HumphreyBogart's character in Nicholas Ray's 1950 film noir In a LonelyPlace. Significantly, Steele might have been describing his ownsituation but is actually quoting the script that he's working on.In the movie Steele constantly maintains a distance between theworld and himself. Even among other people he seems isolated,and it is thus appropriate that he lets a character in his scriptgive words to his emotion.The characters in Gregory Crewdson's series Beneath the Roses(2003-08) seem to be surrounded by a similar aura of loneli-ness. The worlds they inhabit appear to be populated with theghosts of sinister deeds and regrets. The lonely place of the filmtitle refers to the ideal location to commit a crime. The charac-ters of Beneath the Roses seem suddenly, mysteriously, to findthemselves in such places.The setting is central to all of Crewdson's work, in which thelandscape plays a key role. Whether the small American townsand suburbs depicted in Beneath the Roses, the Fireflies photo-graphed at his family's cabin in the woods, or the empty sets atCinecitta studios, the locations in his pictures always convey asense of separation-transmitting a wish to be at home in theworld, but feeling slightly alienated instead.Along with the staged scenic dimension, this quiet feelingof alienation links the three bodies of work in the exhibition.Crewdson became aware early on of the power of light as a wayto transform everyday life into something mysterious and sug-gestive. He uses light as a way to tell a story and as a means ofemphasizing dramatic qualities and the feeling that somethinglurks underneath the surface.In the beautiful but disturbing images in the precisely choreo-graphed and elaborately staged Beneath the Roses series,Crewdson explores the American psyche and the dramas at playwithin quotidian environments. The images deal with the Ameri-can dream and its dark sides, and refer to the myths of Holly-wood movies.The son of a psychoanalyst, Crewdson succeeds in stimulatingthe viewer's subconscious on various levels, playing with meta-phors for fears and desires. Ordinary people inhabit the theatri-cal yet intensely real panoramic images, referring to the pictur-esque tradition of a small human figure in a larger landscape.Many were surprised, therefore, when Gregory Crewdson de-

cided to locate his most recent body of work, Sanctuary (2009),in Italy, shooting for the first time outside the United States.During a trip to Rome, Crewdson had visited the legendaryCinecitta studios, founded by Mussolini in the 1930s andhistorically associated with the film director Federico Fellini.Here Crewdson discovered fragments of a past glory, with occa-sional unexpected views of the surrounding reality of contempo-rary Roman suburbia. A lonely place deserted by the film teamswho had once used the site to recreate the settings of ancientRome, nineteenth-century New York, and medieval Italy.Sanctuary thus establishes a tangible yet immaterial space thatconstitutes the setting of our contemporary collective subcon-scious as constructed by the entertainment industry. The filmsets, with their ghostly, surreal atmosphere, are the subject andprotagonist of the photographs, telling a story of abandonmentand neglect. All but one of the images are devoid of human pres-ence, only depicting traces of post modern man's relentless huntfor entertainment.With the Sanctuary series, Crewdson's cinematic investigationtakes a new direction, moving away from interventions andapproaching the documentary genre. Even though his approachin this series apparently differs from his previous work process,he touches upon the same underlying themes of beauty andsadness. The series reflects the artist's interest in exploring thetensions between reality and fiction, nature and artifice, andphotography and film.In the summer of 1996, Gregory Crewdson spent a few monthsat his family's cabin in Becket, Massachusetts. Each evening hephotographed the fireflies that came alive at dusk, illuminatingthe summer night. Crewdson captured their mating ritual, drawnto the idea of light communicating desire.The Fireflies mirror Crewdson's fascination with nature as amythical zone and his continuous exploration of the landscape.The tiny insects' ephemeral flashes of light become a meditationon the loneliness inherent in the role of the observing photog-rapher, and also on photography itself."A good love scene should be about something else besideslove," says Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place. Like all good pho-tography, Fireflies is about something else besides the reality itapparently depicts. It's not a documentation of luminous insects,but a document of the artist's lonely summer evenings.

111'11111111,Western Motel, 1957Y,~ll~11111vNSity Art Gallery/Bequest

,.t, III1 11111011Clark, B.A. 1903

Kim Novak in Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), 1958© Universal City Studios, Inc.

14

Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, 1979courtesy the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

11.\111111'.~!'lrPortrait, New Orleans, LA. 196811••1" I Ill! II'W Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

The following are subjective responses to works by certain art-ists who have, in one way or another, shaped my aesthetic aware-ness. All of them deal with ideas of beauty, sadness, alienation,and desire. Furthermore, they share a fundamental interestin the intersection between theatricality and everyday life.Many of the images here might be described as "disquieting,"a suggestive word in that it contains the word quiet. Severalof these pictures appear on the surface to be very quiet oreven tranquil, but beneath that surface there is a troublingpsychology in operation.There are strong and fascinating polarities at play in these im-ages. Many of them induce a feeling of loneliness or alienation,which somehow merges with an underlying sense of hope andpossibility. These artists are all American: they all engage whatis sometimes called the "American vernacular" to reveal both

its beauty and its darkness.

The paintings of Edward Hopper are at the center of this tradi-tion. It is now virtually impossible to "read" America visuallywithout referring to photography, cinema, and other artworksthat have been touched by his images. Hopper's works aredeeply evocative and often tell a narrative story in a singlepicture. They depict impregnated moments: the images seemto pose a question-and that question remains unresolved. Hisstill vignettes seem eternally suspended in an instant between

"before" and "after."It is interestinq to observe the use of framing in Hopper's pic-tures. Windows, doorways, and shafts of light are all recurrentmotifs. The various framing devices create different kinds ofspace and are also self-referential: they speak about the actof making a picture. Everything is ultimately brought togetherthrough liqht, which operates throughout as a narrative code,affecting every aspect of the story. The use of framing is alsoimportant in the evocation of voyeurism, the suggestion ofpeering in to the scene: through the frame, the viewer is drawninto the image as a silent witness.Hopper's Western Motel (1957) presents a lone woman in ananonymous hotel room, perched on the edge of a bed. Hervacant gaze hints at some apprehension, or an anticipation ofsomething. The armchair that enters the frame from the lower

right and the two standing suitcases on the lower left sug-gest another presence, implicating the viewer in the narrative.The window creates an interesting dynamiC between interiorand exterior spaces, between the interior room and a strange,

abstracted Nature.While Hopper's images evoke a sense of loneliness and discon-nection, there is always also a feeling of possibility or transcen-dence-established, again, through the use of light. Hoppercould be described as a "psychological realist." On the surface,there's almost nothing happening in his images, yet they arefraught with a quiet sense of mystery, wonder, and alienation.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo deals with the theme ofromantic obsession. Perhaps the most confessional of his films,it addresses some of the issues that controlled his art. In thefilm, Scottie (James Stewart), a man with physical and psycho-logical weaknesses, falls obsessively in love with the image ofa woman, Madeleine (Kim Novak). But Scottie is essentially ob-sessed with a mirage, as this woman does not actually exist.Unable to possess her, he finds another woman, Judy (Novak),and tries to transform her into the woman he desires. But thewoman he is shaping and the woman he desires are the sameperson: Judy was hired to play Madeleine, the dream woman,as part of a murder plot that Scottie does not even begin to"suspect. This romantic obsession culminates in an extraordi-nary scene that takes place in a hotel room, where Scottie triesto make Judy over to look like Madeleine. After completing thetransformation, she emerges from the bathroom and walkstoward Scottie through a haunting green haze. It is a deeplysurreal moment that evokes Hopper: the hotel room, thestrangeness between the couple, the odd displacement, andthe disconcerting climax to the character's fixation-all viewedthrough this beautiful light. Indifferent to his love as an actualperson, Scottie is essentially obsessed with an image. The filmcan be seen as a meditation on the nature of images, identity,

and love.

In his series of Self-Portraits, Lee Friedlander photographedhimself traveling through America, in hotel rooms and else-where, focusing on his own reflection or his shadow. He makes

Richard Dreyfuss in Close £ncounters orthe Third Kind (dir. Steven Spiefberc), 1977courtesy Columbia Pictures/Photofest

16

William Eccfeston Untitled (Memphis), 1970Dve-trenster print 16 x 20 inches, 40.6 x 50.8 cm© Eccleston Artistic Trust, Courtesy Cheim & Read, New York

no attempt to hide the construction of the images: the photo-graphs are highly self-reflexive in their continuous representa-tion of the camera and the photographer at work. Friedlander'sSelf-Portrait, New Orleans, LA (1968) shows the artist reflectedin a store window. There is the passerby, an alibi, the arche-typal anonymous stranger. Then there is the second reflectionof Friedlander, coming from a mirror in the back of the store,positioned poignantly over his own heart. The entire image isshown through a reflection. Friedlander's pictures introduced aradical reinvention of pictorial form. They present the "Ameri-can vernacular" as a fragmented landscape of shadows andreflections: a hall of mirrors.

Using his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, as a backdrop,William Eggleston explored the seemingly mundane subjectmatter of his everyday life. transforming the ordinary into athing of wonder and mystery-utterly simple, yet endlesslycomplex. Eggleston took a diaristic approach to photography,filtering his personal experience through the imagination.Consider the biggest tricycle in the world (Untitled [Memphis),1970): an image about spatial dislocation and the surprise ofscale. Eggleston's work has become an irrefutable part of theAmerican iconography: a touchstone and great source of inspi-ration for artists worldwide.

After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California (1979), from JoelSternfeld's project American Prospects, is emblematic of thethemes in question: the classic, perfect, still surface with a dis-turbing psychological underside. The unmistakable palette andthe glow of the light establish the image in its own luminousworld. During the period of this project, Sternfeld drove acrossthe country in his van, and with an eight-by-ten camera photo-graphed what he saw as moments of contradiction and com-plexity in the American landscape.

Steven Spielberg's movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind(1977) takes place in a similar landscape. The protagonist ofthe film, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), lives in an Ohio subur-ban subdivision, where he witnesses a series of extraterrestrialevents. In an attempt to make sense of it, he starts, for some

unknowable reason, making piles of things, beginning withshaving cream. As he constructs these mounds, over and overagain, he says to himself: "This is important. this is meaning-ful." The mounds become larger and larger in scale, and seemto take a distinct shape. As Roy's obsession increases, he beginsto alienate himself from his family and his community. This ac-tivity climaxes with Roy constructing an extraordinary totemicstructure in his living room, built from household appliancesand backyard debris. Various oppositions are brought togetherin this image from the film: interior and exterior space, domes-ticity and nature, normality and paranormality.

In Larry Sultan's body of work Pictures from Home, he photo-graphed his mother and father in their retirement community,again using windows. There is a sense in the project of isola-tion, evoked through the framing of the picture window: a kindof division between audience and subject, between subject andworld. The image Mom Looking Through Curtain (1989) is onethat strikes that uncanny balance between the evocations ofalienation and connection. The window and curtains providethe ideal metaphor-elements that allow visual contact from aseparate vantage point.

I was a graduate student when I first saw David Lynch's BlueVelvet (1986), a film that changed my life as an artist comingof age. I remember realizing, as I watched the movie, that myperception of things would never be the same. And I was notalone: the film redirected American iconography toward an ex-ploration of the murky fascinations existing behind the closeddoors of apparently nondescript places.In this film, Lynch made effective use of bright, saturatedcolors turning into darkness to help him set the tone of thestory. Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLachlan), the protagonist-a wholesome, innocent, young man-happens upon a grotesquediscovery that hurtles him into the midst of a decidedly un-wholesome series of events, and a journey into the lives of darkcharacters who populate the underworld of his town. Jeffreyis drawn progressively deeper into the brutal world of drugdealer and blackmailer Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a violentand perversely evil man. Jeffrey becomes obsessed and illicitly

Phlllp-Lorca diCorcia, Mario, 1978© Philip-Lorca diCorcia, courtesy Pace/MacGili Gallery,New York, Spruth Magers Serlin London

18

Larry Sultan, Mom Looking Through Curtain, 1989courtesy the artist

jl, 11/II/llpII "llm Still #48, 1979IH~I ·Iwl MCllro Pictures Gallery,Hili 1111I onrton

involved with Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), a beautifuland mysterious woman, who is Frank's terrified and desperatesexual slave. There is a pivotal scene in which Jeffrey watchesFrank and Dorothy from inside a closet in her apartment;we are present, watching, as the lines are blurred betweenwitness and participant, desire and guilt, love and violence. LikeVertigo, Blue Velvet deals explicitly with the theme of sexualobsession; both films might be seen as explorations of theircreators' longings and fears.

In the late 1970s, Philip-Lorca diCorcia staged photographsof various domestic scenes. He created a body of work thatperfectly merged theatricality and everyday life, finding aphotographic sensibility that hovers somewhere between thedocumentary image and cinematic effect. Mario (1978) showsdiCorcia's brother staring blankly into a refrigerator. On thesurface, this is the most ordinary and banal of activities-yetwithin the fiction of this picture, the seemingly mundane eventis somehow made over into a moment of reckoning.

Cindy Sherman's series Untitled Film Stills, which she began inthe late 1970s, changed photography forever in terms of bring-ing in the influence of popular culture. These photographs, too,explore the themes of mirroring images, identity, and a certainkind of individual isolation from oneself. In Sherman's UntitledFilm Still #48 (1979), a lone woman stands at the side of anempty highway, with her back toward the camera and a suitcaseby her side. The road recedes into a picturesque landscape.The picture is disconcerting in that (like the Hopper interior) itevokes feelings of both loneliness and expectation.

Paul Thomas Anderson's film Magnolia (1999) is a contempo-rary melodrama investigating the lives of a series of seem-ingly unrelated characters living in Los Angeles. Their storiescome together in the end through a miraculous natural event:a fantastical scene in which frogs rain down from the sky.Although the image is hallucinatory, Anderson presents it withan extraordinary sense of realist detail and authenticity. Thissequence, like much of the work in question, brings togetherthe real and the fantastical in a perfect union.

There are, of course, many other artists who have helped todefine my own photographic vision. In 1972, when I was tenyears old, my father, a psychoanalyst, took me to see the DianeArbus retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Ithink that experience, on an unconscious level, made me wantto be a photographer. Arbus's images are larger than life and,in a certain way, haunted. Her work engages the anxieties ofthe American existence, with a formal approach that is utterlyunique-she made an indelible impact on my understandingof visual narrative, and on my take on the nether side of theAmerican Dream.I later came to see that Robert Frank's seminal project TheAmericans was, in a sense, a precursor to Arbus's view of Amer-ican life and landscape. Frank's body of work has now becomepart of the American mythology, and-again hearkening backto Hopper-Frank uses light as an important narrative elementin his images.Others have rendered a sharp jolt to audiences through dia-ristic modes of expression. Nan Goldin, in her remarkable Bal-lad of Sexual Dependency, worked with a depth of franknessthat few artists have achieved in any medium. Stephen Shore'sUncommon Places, by contrast, deploys an almost Warholesque,dispassionate emptiness-a lack of authorial presence in anautobiographical project-that is equally striking.'My own work comes back again and again to the AmericanDream and its darker inverse. Without the work of such artists.our understanding of the complexities of American life. andits angels and demons, would be far less interesting. And myown vision would, without question, have taken another shapeentirely.

The basis for this piece was from a presentation delivered in 2006on the occasion of the exhibition Drawing on Hopper: Gregory Crewdson/Edward Hopper, at Williams College Museum of Art. The essay was thenpublished in the Spring 2008 issue (no. 190) of Aperture Magazine.Gregory Crewdson would like to thank Costanza Theodoli-Braschi for hercontribution to the text.

Kyle McLachlan in Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch), 1986courtesy De Laurentns Ent. Gr./Photofest/© De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

20