Picture perfect

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters

Gregory Crewdson is technically a photographer, but the scale of his work makes him seem more like a filmmaker who shoots only one frame at a time. Where most directors call “action,” he stands on his sets and calls: “And ... hold.”

Brief Encounters is a fascinating documentary that looks at Crewdson’s methods over the several years he spent shooting a series of images called Beneath the Roses. Even he compares his process (and budget) to that of an independent filmmaker.

“The whole process of making art is an act of faith in a way,” he says. “This idea that you’re going to will something into existence that means something to the larger world. Particularly in my way of making pictures, which is this kind of preoccupation with trying to make something perfect.”

Crewdson works almost entirely in tiny, crumbling towns in Massachusetts. The results are haunting — small, seemingly dejected figures posed in ragged rooms or on shabby streets.

The rooms are custom-built, like film sets, while the streets are carefully lit and posed. A car that appears to be in motion in the finished photograph has in fact been placed just so in the middle of the road.

Director Ben Shapiro, who made a documentary short on the same subject in 2005, gives us a brief outline of Crewdson’s youth. Born in Brooklyn in 1962, he remembers his father (a psychiatrist) taking him to see a retrospective of Diane Arbus — when he was 10. A brief time in a band yielded one (prophetic) hit, Let Me Take Your Photo.

Brief Encounters is just that, clocking in at 77 minutes. A little more time with the artist might be instructive — he’s chatty and open, but I longed to hear more about how films inspire his work. (He mentions in passing that Beneath the Roses was first conceived as a film.)

Perhaps a sequel is in order. The film ends with Crewdson in the Cinecitta studio backlot in Rome, excited to have found a muse to match Massachusetts. An Internet search reveals a subsequent series of photos called Sanctuary, devoid of people but just as poignant.

Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters opens Dec. 21 at the Bloor Hot Docs cinema in Toronto, and Jan. 11 in Vancouver.