For his second exhibition at Galerie Daniel Templon, young American photography star Gregory Crewdson presents his latest work, inspired by fantasy cinema and TV series and evoking the dark side of the American dream.

The Beneath The Roses series presents a wide range of psychological and family situations, bordering on the psychotic. At dusk, in a peaceful suburban setting, characters are frozen in strange actions. A naked pregnant woman waits outside a dilapidated house. A young teenager looks at her mother, lost in thought, lying on a bed. A woman with a worried face takes a bath in a gloomy room, a bottle of medicine on the edge of the sink.

These unusual scenes reveal frustrations, unspoken desires and anguish. As the artist explains: “The challenge is to create your own world. Mine is a set onto which I project my own psychological dramas.

Gregory Crewdson’s universe plays with the codes of fantasy cinema, from Hitchcock to Lynch and Spielberg. He works like a director, with sets designed entirely from storyboards, a full film crew (set designers, make-up artists, props men, etc.) and special effects worthy of science-fiction films. However, in his opinion, unlike other narrative forms, only the photography remains silent. There is no before or after. The events it captures remain a mystery.