All of his photographs have a narrative and are taken to convey an idea or message. Aesthetically they are very pleasing, using complex lighting to control the mood of the scene.
His series "Beneath The Roses" (seen above) featured photographs that share a classic american feel and explores a strange sense of drama. The images themselves are very striking, they feature a lot of information which leads you into several potential stories. To me the photographs seem to speak of dark secrets that lie behind closed doors. On first glance the images seem to reflect a typical American lifestyle but when you take a second to look around the images the context begins to throw you. Is there something more sinister going on? The smaller details seem to play a large part in Crewdsons photographs, we are given clues that only appear if we look for them and with each clue a possible narrative becomes apparent. For me personally there is something quite disturbing about most of the photos in this set, the characters seem to be glazed over and somewhat non-human.
I think his work is very fascinating, they could easily be snapshots from a hollywood blockbuster but I think it's interesting that he chooses to use photography although it's apparent he would be quite capable of being a director and creating feature length films. The level of details in the shots is astounding, every element is controlled and each shot can take up to 3 days with a team of 30+ people.
Although not related to my own ideas, his work is very influential. I'm interested in the controlling of environments within photographs and think this is something to think about with my own shots in this project. Especially since I'm trying to convey a narrative, I will have to control what I show my audience which in turn controls what information they are given. If I was to include things in my images that didn't really add to the narrative it may throw people off and begin to distract from the message I'm trying to get across.
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