cebook for photographers. The basic question that
had shaped the magazine’s history still persisted:
How to represent British art photography. Mark
Durden’s February/March 1998 article ‘‘Defining
the Moment’’ reveals that despite the changing
opinion, the magazine’s subscription base was still
true to British photographic traditions. Conceptual
and contemporary practices pinned theoretical
multimedia practices against straight art photogra-
phy. The latter was still difficult to define, as
explored in articles written by photography critic
and professor, David Green. An open forum for
debate to the end of its funding reliance, exhibi-
tions such as the Victoria and Albert’s British
Photography: Into the 1990s(1988) and Museum
of Modern Art’s British Photography from the
Thatcher Years (1990) paid homage toCreative
Camera’sparticipation in attempts to decipher the
question. David Brittain, the final editor, rechris-
tened the magazine asDPICTafter its close, which
aimed to increase critical influence.
Ultimately, the evidential question for its read-
ership was ‘‘what is art photography?’’ given the
succession of movements, theory, attention to cer-
tain types of artists, the question of social use,
and changes in technology thatCreative Camera
had championed. Both questions proved amor-
phous. Discourse and discussion over the photo-
graph as object was still the main topic fueling
DPICTuntil its closing in 2002. A cumulative
book,Creative Camera: Thirty Years of Writing
(1999), edited by Brittain, is a demonstrative pub-
lication voicing significant British perspectives on
such questions.
SarahL. Marion
Seealso:Burgin, Victor; Cartier-Bresson, Henri;
Killip, Chris; Parr, Martin; Spence, Jo; Szarkowski,
JohnFurther Reading
British Photography: Towards a Bigger Picture. New York:
Aperture Foundation, Inc., 1988.
Brittain, David, ed.Creative Camera: Thirty Years of Writ-
ing. Manchester and New York: University of Manche-
ster Press, 1999.
Kismaric, Susan.British Photography from the Thatcher
Years. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1990.
Osman, Colin and Peter Turner.Creative Camera Interna-
tional Yearbook. London: Coo Press Limited, 1975–
1978.GREGORY CREWDSON
American
Gregory Crewdson came to the forefront in photo-
graphy during the 1990s. His photographs—richly
detailed yet uncanny color images of American
suburbia—build on a tradition of documentary
photography that looks closely at quotidian events
in the lives of ordinary people. Intrigued by the
tension that exists between domesticity and nature,
Crewdson transforms his real, suburban settings
into entirely fictional worlds, creating single
moments in an absurd, fantastic narrative revealing
the hidden underbelly of everyday life. ‘‘Photogra-
phy...is not at all about an exact representation of
the truth,’’ Crewdson has said, ‘‘but is rather a
dramatization of something which ought to have
remained hidden’’ (Moody, 2002).
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1962, Crewd-
son first learned of Freudian analysis from his
father, a psychologist who conducted sessions
with his patients at home. As a child, Crewdson
would overhear fragments of these conversations
through the floorboards in the living room,
inventing entire stories based on excerpts of peo-
ple’s dreams, an experience that would later
prove essential to Crewdson’s use of narrative
in photography. It was Crewdson’s father who
first introduced his son to the medium, taking
him to see the 1972 retrospective exhibition of
Diane Arbus at the Museum of Modern Art.
Arbus’ photographs of New York City, which
she explored as both familiar and foreign terri-
tory, and her use of the camera to challenge
preconceived ideas of the city’s reality made aCREWDSON, GREGORY