Above – Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters Trailer from Benjamin Shapiro on Vimeo.

Gregory Crewdson is a photographer with a filmmaker’s eye

by Larry Murray

For Greg Crewdson, the Berkshires are his canvas. He has turned the nocturnal silence of the rural Berkshires into eerie stills of a motion picture. I first became aware of his work when the oversized works were on display at Mass MoCA in North Adams. They were the sort of images you could spend a lot of time with, imagining what had gone before the moment in time they represented.

To many, Crewdson is as an important chronicler of the Berkshires as was Norman Rockwell. Rockwell’s brush perfectly captured the last century, while Crewdson’s lens is the perfect medium in which to capture the fleeting images of the current one.

His scenes – each an artistic composition – have been shot in North Adams, Adams…