A Young Person Recommends... Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

A forest scene with a shed on the left and two figures on the right.

A Young Person Recommends... Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

On Photographers
At around noon on Friday, I decided to take a trip to The Photographer’s Gallery, a building devoted entirely to photography that is able to support and display artists’ work. I had the pleasure of visiting Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines with my younger cousin – who enjoyed it – therefore, it is clear that this is really for people of all ages
 
The Gallery is able to add to the cold atmosphere that Gregory Crewdson’s photos were trying to create, by placing them far apart and on a simple, blank, white wall, with little blue lighting. The exhibition progresses through various rooms on different floors, which are very easy to reach both by lift or stairs.

Even before reading about the exhibition and viewing the behind-the-scenes documentary, it is clear that Gregory Crewdson elaborately stages. The elegant narratives compressed into single images, many of them taken at twilight or sunset, in small forests or villages with wintery and snowy backgrounds. Near the end of this journey I had been taken on, I read some comments that other visitors had kindly left: their opinions on an individual photo of their choice narrated to them. As I imagined, each person enjoyed the exhibition, and only had positive and well thought out comments regarding the images.

I would definitely recommend this exhibition to anyone. As a matter of fact, I returned myself the following day and examined with care details which might have seemed irrelevant at first. These details are actually vital to each photo, showing them to be even more beautiful and more complex than before. For example the small bottle of pills on the medical cabinet; or the various shades of grey of the landscape. Each photograph, and how The Photographers' Gallery presents it, is truly a piece of art that allows anyone to be immersed in a separate world with a pure story.

– Carlotta Midolo

A forest scene with a shed on the left and two figures on the right.

Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

Thu 22 Jun 2017 - Sat 07 Oct 2017

This was the first UK exhibition of Cathedral of the Pines, a body of work by acclaimed American artist Gregory Crewdson, and it was also the first time The Photographers’ Gallery devoted all three of its gallery spaces to one artist.

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