GREGORY CREWDSON, Untitled, 2002, Digital pigment print, image size 40 x 25 in. © Gregory Crewdson Over the course of several weeks in the summer of 2001, photographer Gregory Crewdson captured unsettling and surreal scenes of American suburban life in a ranch-style home in Rutland.  The se ries made in Rutland included pictures of a stunned Tilda Swinton looking toward the sky out of frame, with her hand gently resting on a car hood. One photo shows a weary Phillip Seymour-Hoffman drooping out of the driver’s seat of a car with a trunk overflowing with flowers. Another captures a slouched Gwenyth Paltrow hanging her head reflected in the mirror in a beige-toned living room. Yet another picture shows a distressed Julianne Moore in a nightgown perched on the edge of a bed. Crewdson also shot a forlorn William H. Macy sitting on a rainy eve in a garage brimming with sodden earth.  The images created in Vermont featuring famous actors were part of Crewdson’s “Dream House” series, appearing in a spread in The New York Times Magazine in 2002, commissioned by Kathy Ryan, the magazine’s photography director for nearly 40 years.  “It felt kind of magical in a way,” Crewdson said, 25 years on. “All these great actors in this ordinary home.” GREGORY CREWDSON, Untitled, 2002, Digital pigment print, image size 40 x 25 in. © Gregory Crewdson In addition to appearing in print, Crewdson’s photography is featured in permanent collections in several art museums including The Albertina in Vienna, Austria and The Guggenheim in New York, featuring photos taken in Rutland.  He was drawn to the Marble City by its “timeless quality,” Crewdson said in an interview this month. He also seeks nondescript “yet compelling” places to photograph at twilight. Crewdson uses this lighting to “transform everyday life into some kind of mystery,” he said.  “Rutland hit all those qualifications,” Crewdson, 63, from Brooklyn, New York, said.  His series “Beneath the Roses,” shot across five years in the mid-aughts, also featured photos in Rutland, including a pregnant woman crossing the intersection of Merchant’s Row and West Street, a woman stepping out of a bronze Chrysler on a muddy lot into a puddle strewn with balloons, and scattered people caught in a daze by train tracks. The series also featured an image of actress Lauren Ambrose staring skyward standing by a gas station on State Street in Rutland. “I think that a lot of his photographs have more meaning to the locals now because, you know, it’s right in their backyard,” Vermont filmmaker David Giancola said. GREGORY CREWDSON, Untitled, 2003-2008, Digital pigment print, image size 57 x 88 in. © Gregory Crewdson Crewdson first came to Rutland after renting equipment for photoshoots in the Berkshires from Rutland-based Edgewood Studios, an independent film company headed by Giancola. In that era of the early 2000s, Giancola directed films in the Rutland area such as the family drama “The Newcomers,” with then-aspiring actors Chris Evans, Paul Dano and Josh Peck and the science fiction action “Lightening: Fire from the Sky” with a young Jesse Eisenberg.  During that time in the early 2000s, Giancoala said Edgewood Studios was “really cranking” out action, disaster and family films in Vermont, and had extensive equipment, stages, cameras, props housed in Rutland studio that Crewdson used for various shoots. Giancola said that the wide range of scenery in Rutland County, including mountains, lakes, quarries and industrial decay sets the stage for a variety of stories. A Rutland-based actor and writer Sandy Gartner met Crewdson while working for Edgewood Studios, helping Crewdson cast for photos, and Crewdson asked her to be his production coordinator. Her first assignment was to construct a house frame for a shoot and she enlisted carpentry students from Stafford Technical Center in Rutland for the task, Gartner said.  After aiding his photoshoots around the city, Gartner remembered her in-laws’ home in Rutland, which had been left untouched after their deaths. “Something clicked,” Gartner said. “This is kind of like a ready-made set for him.” GREGORY CREWDSON, Untitled, 2003-2008, Digital pigment print, image size 57 x 88 in. © Gregory Crewdson Seeking out a cinematic look to his photographs, Crewdson agreed that the wood-grain, ranch-style home perched on a hill in the southeast side of the city looked like a preserved film set from the 1960s or ‘70s. He brought well-known actors into the home at the witching hour to inhabit his world, and tell the story in a single moment frozen in time.  “I love how a still photograph has no beginning or no end,” Crewdson said. “In my pictures, there’s a sense that something just happened or is about to happen.” Gartner recalled renting flowers from the local Home Depot for the shoot with Seymour-Hoffman and the Rutland City Fire Department hosing down background for the William H. Macy shot. She said Swindon was particularly “down-to-earth,” reciting a monologue for the crew for feedback.  Gartner, who currently serves on the board of directors for Vermont Humanities and is the co- producing director of Vermont Actors’ Repertory Theatre, said that Vermont is still a haven for artists, with resources such as the Paramount Theater and Chaffee Art Center in Rutland. Still, Gartner said she witnessed the slow closure of arts and theater venues around Vermont due to financial constraints and the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the stage at the College of St. Joseph’s and JAG Productions in White River Junction.  While still making films, Giancola has tightened operations at Edgewood Studios given the fast advancing digital technology. He said that nowadays, filmmakers can rely on phones, artificial intelligence and live interactive LED screens to make films, rather than expensive video cameras and set design.  Giancola said that the early aughts were a “very specific, fertile period” for Edgewood Studios and for filmmaking generally, and remarked that smartphones have changed the way that artists relate to each other. “We spend a lot of time with technology and not with each other,” forgoing interactions that built trust needed for collaboration and artistic experimentation, Giancola said.  Crewdson also continues to produce new work. He was recently featured in Rolling Stone magazine for taking the “perfect shot”  for the singer, songwriter Phoebe Bridgers’ upcoming tour, which has generated buzz for instituting a “phone-free” policy at concerts. The picture features a lone figure in a car driving through an empty, dilapidated street in Adams, Massachusetts at dusk.  GREGORY CREWDSON, Untitled, 2003-2008, Digital pigment print, image size 57 x 88 in. © Gregory Crewdson Crewdson said he feels aligned with Bridgers creatively in their shared fixation on “loneliness and mystery” in their art. Crewdson was not aware of the phone ban before the shoot, but did bring an analog phone booth to the street for the photograph, he said, capturing a time when making a phone call took more effort.  Being present without a phone for the concert brings “intentionality” to the experience, Crewdson said, and he aims to bring a similar sense of purpose to making and viewing photographs. In a digital world with ubiquitous images generated by AI, “it’s important to make a picture in an actual place that means something,” Crewdson said.  Read the story on VTDigger here: ‘Fertile period’ in Rutland City 25 years ago served as backdrop for photographer’s surreal scenes of suburban life. ...read more read less