Photo Analysis - Twilight In Suburbia

Following on from a post I published last week about the unique and pioneering photo artist Gregory Crewdson I want to delve a little deeper for this post, and fully explore and evaluate one of his photographs from his ground breaking collection entitled Twilight.

Take a look at the following photo for a moment. What do you see? And then I will tell you what I see.

In the above photo we see a classic example of Crewdson’s expressionist work. We witness the usual American suburban setting, three characters and a picture rich in story. This image was part of Crewdson’s Twilight series and the picture captures the essence of lighting in twilight hours in an outside environment. The picture is conditioned with an evocative, tranquil blue. The aesthetics of Crewdson's pictures are a product of intense experimentation, hard labour and engineering and his work fits almost neatly into how C. Jabez Hughes believed the pictorial position to be in that:

'The photographer, like an artist, is at liberty to employ what means he thinks necessary to carry out his ideas. If a picture cannot be produced by one negative, let him have two or ten; but let it be clearly understood, that these are only means to an end, and that the picture when finished must stand or fall entirely by the effects produced, and not by the means employed'.

The three characters we see in the photo are probably typical residents of suburbia yet through their facial expressions and their body language these people speak of something a little less comfortable.

Is it that they could be washing some of their ‘dirty laundry’ in public, has something indoors spilled out into a more public area, if so was it accidental or deliberate? The girl, in her underwear, possibly the woman’s daughter, stands barefoot on a grass plot with her head held down, it is a typical posture signifying shame. Why is she feeling so shameful? What has she done? Has she done anything to feel such shame, is her guilt unnecessary? Perhaps she has been caught unawares by her mum returning home from a food shopping trip sooner than expected?

The woman stands by the car she has just stepped out of, she’s clearly been distracted - but has she been shocked? Her body language tells us much. She seems sedentary, stopped in her tracks, maybe she is in shock after all. The car door hasn’t been shut possibly due to a sudden and unexpected interruption to her ordinary day. The passenger, a younger girl perhaps the sister of the other girl, remains a safer distance away from all the trouble but observing everything with maybe some trepidation or perhaps no concern at all. Could it be the sister, in actual fact, is witnessing this scene with great anticipation, maybe with perhaps a bit of schadenfreude and excitement, is her big sister in trouble and how is mum going to punish her?

There could be a more sinister reason why this girl stands outside at twilight in just her bra and pants with a startled mother looking on, but the absence of any response from the mother tends to suggest something much less harmful and more common in suburbia, even if it’s usually kept behind closed doors. The mother may be thinking what so many mothers often ask themselves of their daughters - ‘What am I going to do with her?’ It is because there are so many unanswered questions due to the rich narrative element in Crewdson’s pictures that curiosity is heightened.

So now you know what I see in this picture, but I would like to know what you see. Tell me if you wish.