Alone Street brings together two major bodies of work by Gregory Crewdson, Cathedral of the Pines (Aperture, 2016) and An Eclipse of Moths (Aperture, 2020), in a single, elegant, and affordable monograph. Both series expand on the artist’s obsessive exploration of the psychogeography of small-town, post-industrial New England and underscore the precision and depth of Crewdson’s unique mode of photographic storytelling. In each image, light, color, and carefully crafted scenography evoke the feeling that, as art historian Alexander Nemerov has astutely described, “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.” In addition to the full set of images from each series, Alone Street, presents a selection of behind-the-scenes images and storyboards, revealing the extensive preparation and planning that went into the making of each work.

Contributors

Photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates. Interviewer Cate Blanchett.
 

Gregory Crewdson (born in Brooklyn, 1962) is a graduate of the Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, where he is now director of graduate studies in photography. His series Beneath the Roses is subject of the 2012 documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters. Crewdson’s awards include the Skowhegan Medal for Photography, National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship, and Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship. His prior books include Twilight (2002), Beneath the Roses (2008), Cathedral of the Pines (Aperture, 2016), and An Eclipse of Moths (Aperture, 2020). Crewdson is represented internationally by Gagosian Gallery.
Joyce Carol Oates is an author and poet whose books, short stories, and collected writings have been recognized via the National Book Award, O. Henry Award, National Humanities Medal, Norman Mailer Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and PEN/Malamud Award, among others. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, New Jersey, and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Cate Blanchett is an actor, producer, artistic director, and humanitarian. In addition to her two Academy Awards and three British Academy Film Awards, she served as jury president of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and the 2020 Venice International Film Festival. She was appointed a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French minister of culture, has been awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in the General Division, and serves as a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).