An Eclipse of Moths

GREGORY CREWDSON says he is inspired by the works of Norman Rockwell, who lived in Stockbridge. (Originally from Brooklyn, Crewdson now resides in neighboring North Egremont.) “I almost see myself as connected to him, but it’s the opposite, you know?” he says in an interview published in Vanity Fair. “Where he would create a utopian world, mine is a darker, more alienated view of the same landscape.” Crewdson’s latest series of photographs, An Eclipse of Moths (Aperture, 2020), is his exploration of the post-industrial American landscape, a follow-up to the forest scenes of Becket in Cathedral of the Pines featured five years ago in Berkshire Magazine. Crewdson spent months scouting and staging in Pittsfield before production began—a taxi depot, a traveling carnival lot, an abandoned factory complex, defunct bars and diners, vacant storefronts. He describes images like this one, “Red Star Express,” 2018-2019, as a study on brokenness, a yearning for something beyond, a search for meaning and transcendence that reflects the current state of the world and something outside the realm of time.

—Anastasia Stanmeyer