Crewdson reveals a world of decomposition and rejuvenation transformed by glorious technicolor. He refigures the safe and secure spaces of suburbia into domains of unfettered possibility: ‘fluorescent blue butterflies caught in golden braids hang beside the decaying matter of an animal corpse,’ giant worms burrow into the succulent flesh of a hairy gourd, dead birds surround a pyramid of poisonous red berries. Nature is magnified to the point where it becomes a ‘dystopic nightmare.’

Inspired by dioramas seen in natural history museums, Crewdson sets up his ‘landscapes’ entirely in the studio. Meticulously making a particular tableau and then, over a period of four to six weeks, elaborating it into a construction 20 x 15 foot in scale, he then takes a single picture of the scene with a large-format camera, choosing an angle that suggests the point of view of a child; finally, Crewdson destroys the set after the resulting photograph is printed. Exaggerated colour, lighting and scale heighten the unreal, dreamy aspect of these ‘natural scenes’. Using a mixture of artifice and nature, fiction and truth, these photographs subvert commonplace views of the suburban landscape, turning it into a terrain of possibility for menacing and mysterious beauty.