“In ‘Hamlet,’” Teskey writes, “the drowning of Ophelia is a catastrophe that precedes and is necessary to the catastrophe of the whole play. But Ophelia’s catastrophe is disconcertingly reported by Queen Gertrude in exceptionally lyrical, beautiful language. The scene that is painted in this language of Gertrude’s is outdoors, where a willow tree hangs over a stream.” Focusing on language in his interpretation, Teskey draws out the differences between the deaths of the two versions of Ophelia—the Shakespearean nature-death, and the Crewdson death, which is as unnatural as a death can be.
Not all English professors, however, were as impressed by Crewdson’s reworking of a classic image. For Visiting Professor of English Henri Cole, the crudeness of the death was inauthentic. “It seems kind of kitschy,” he writes in an e-mail. “[It is] stagey and directive—why not a collie, instead of a woman in a slip?—and overcooked, like meat.”
Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography Robin E. Kelsey also criticized the photograph for being overly theatrical. “What cultural work might this pastiche of pre-Raphaelitism and cinematic fantasy be doing?” he asked in an e-mail. “Is it staging the very unconsciousness that it requires to be taken seriously as art? I have my doubts.”
DEATH AND EUPHORIA
Visual and Environmental Studies Visiting Lecturer David W. Hilliard studied with and worked alongside Crewdson at Yale University. Hilliard talks about the childhood influences that led to Crewdson’s fascination with suburbia. “I don’t think I can be as objective as some people,” he says about the photograph, “because I know so much about the process. When I look at the photograph, I immediately think about what I know about him. His father was a psychotherapist, and he’d meet people in his home office. Gregory would listen through the door and floorboards as kid, and he picked up on some strange things. His work is the analysis of what he heard through walls, as well as his love of film, fiction, and art. The image is a distillation.” There is the difference between fact and conjecture in the biography Hilliard provides and the intelligent analysis offered by other Harvard professors.
“When I look at the couch in the photo, it looks like a therapist’s couch,” Hilliard says, guessing that Crewdson took this childhood image he associated with his father’s practice and transplanted it into his probing photograph. “The suburban living room also is reminiscent of the work of Steven Spielberg with his focus on twilight stuff,” he says. “Crewdson consistently employs ‘twilight’ as a narrative tool in his works … this light often acts as metaphor for passage, loss, fear, obscurity, and wonder.” Hilliard’s focus on the effect of light makes sense, coming from his own background in photography. Yet it also harkens to the philosophical perspective I heard from Aleksy, where the effect of the water’s reflection and framing were essential to the piece’s underlying meaning.
While Cole and Kelsey criticized Crewdson’s work for being derivative and overly theatrical, Hilliard suggests that the conceptual elements that motivate these criticisms are the key to understanding Crewdson’s work. In a sense, his work is intentionally overdone. “He loves the production [process] so much. These elaborate sets would be built. He loves hiring a set crew, actors, and assistants. An incredible cast of characters comes together for one photograph, which is really just a still from a film. In a way it’s strange. I think in some reviews he’s been criticized: where a film director would have a movie, he gets a slice. But that’s what he likes.”
“Photography, unlike a film, allows you to linger on just one thing,” Hilliard says. “Instead of a series of images, you get one image that you project the whole movie onto. Depending on your history or your perspective as viewer, you can look at and think of Shakespeare, Spielberg, domesticity, gender, or women’s issues … I like that they’re so open to interpretation yet so simple.” This summary of the photograph highlights its ultimate ambiguity. “Untitled (Ophelia)” can yield a vast array of interpretations, each one equally nuanced and important for reaching a multi-perspective understanding. The essential components shared by different sensibilities elucidate the most important parts of the picture—its commentary on suburbia, its filmic narrative.
Hilliard also teaches me something new about this photograph I love. To create the illusion of deep water, Crewdson cut off the legs of furniture and actually flooded the set only a few inches deep. “She’s drowning in nothing,” Hilliard says. “She is probably lying on the floor.” For its barrage of interpretive violence, the theatrical setup is more functional and simple than imagined. “You don’t think about it at first, but she’s drowning psychologically, not physically. She looks like she could be alive. It’s death and euphoria at the same time.”
—Staff writer Leanna B. Ehrlich can be reached at lehrlich@college.harvard.edu.