Crewdson’s 2002 project, Dream House peers into the unseen psychological dramas of domestic American life. Focused largely on elaborately staged scenes of home interiors, the twelve images from this portfolio represent frozen moments filled with clues and gestures that suggest underlying narrative sequences that bend ideas of family life into surrealist fantasy. In Dream House, Crewdson nods to the significant influence of cinema over his work by employing actors such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tilda Swinton, and Gwyneth Paltrow to stand in as subjects to perform Crewdson’s melodramas in still form. In doing so, Crewdson emphasizes the power of still narrative in relationship to stories told through time, and argues that photographic storytelling can exist as equal in stature to box office films.

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