13 Quotes by Gregory Crewdson

My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.

My pictures are about everyday life combined with theatrical effect. I want them to feel outside of time, to take something routine and make it irrational. I’m always looking for a small moment that is a revelation.

Every artist has a central story to tell, and the difficulty, the impossible task, is trying to present that story in pictures.

What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that’s internal.

I think that, in a sense, there’s something about photography in general that we could associate with memory, or the past, or childhood.

My pictures are about a search for a moment – a perfect moment. To me the most powerful moment in the whole process is when everything comes together and there is that perfect, beautiful, still moment. And for that instant, my life makes sense.

The suburban landscape is alien and strange and exotic. I photograph it out of longing and desire. My photographs are also about repression and internal angst.

I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire.

It’s about finding meaning through light. I’m always interested in tensions. A primary one is the collision between the familiar and the strange.