Cathedral of the Pines - Hardcover

The cinematic leitmotifs are quintessential Crewdson. Forest clearings, anonymous townscapes and nondescript interiors become elaborately staged, suspenseful images that explore the recesses of the American psyche and the disquieting dramas of American daily life.--Rachel Lowry "Time "

[Crewdson] reclaims his spot as a heavy-weight of staged photography and a chronicler of white existentialist angst, marking... the passing of time and epochs in American history.--Martha Schwendener "The New York Times "

Crewdson is going deeper, using friends and family in some pictures (a rare departure), making smaller-scale prints than usual - and generally honing his famed psychological acuity.--Ted Loos "Cultured "

Though his characters seem to share a sense of wistful foreboding, the naturalistic surroundings lend a mood of beautiful, if indifferent, continuity to life in the woods. "American Photo"

The monograph is lavish, sweeping, and precise, with no expense spared in the design or printing. "Photo Eye"

Printed with the highest quality and oversized to provide additional detail to the beautiful large-scale photographs between the pages, what you get is nothing short of a serious collectors item. "Juxtapoz""

Though his characters seem to share a sense of wistful foreboding, the naturalistic surroundings lend a mood of beautiful, if indifferent, continuity to life in the woods.--Jack Crager "American Photo Magazine "

Cathedral of the Pines presents Gregory Crewdson’s first new body of work in over five years. The series marks a return to Crewdson’s classic style of storytelling via the single image, using light and color to create newly intimate, psychologically charged imagery. This body of work marks a time of transition for the artist, including the end of his marriage and a retreat from New York to a remote home and studio in western Massachusetts―a period of time during which Crewdson chose to remain socially withdrawn, instead committing to daily, long-distance, open-water swims and cross-country skiing on wooded paths. Cathedral of the Pines is named after one of these trails, deep in the forests of Becket, Massachusetts, the site where he found the inspiration to make these new pictures. It was there that he felt darkness lift, experienced a reconnection with his artistic process, and moved into a period of renewal and intense creative productivity. The photographs are accompanied by an essay by Alexander Nemerov, who addresses the work in relation to the American past, focusing in particular on the way the images draw space and time down to ceremonial points, in which “all that ever happened in these places seems crystallized in his tableaux, as if the quiet melancholy of Crewdson’s scenes gathered the unruly sorrows and other little-guessed feelings of people long-gone who once stood on those spots.”