Sound Project - Ophelia

The Picture I chose for my Sound Project is called Ophelia and was take by Gregory Crewdson. I did some research on what the picture meant and a bit of it's story so here it is:

    

Gregory Crewdson created a series of twenty large scale photographs titled Beneath the Roses. One of the photographs in this series is Ophelia. Crewdson is known for creating images of surreal suburbia. The production of these works is very expensive. Crewdson creates elaborate sets that some critics love while others say make the subjects appear lifeless and flat. I find that he creates an atmosphere and feeling of awe that is unattainable without constructing a movie set like environment. Crewdson uses both interior, private spaces such as home interiors and exterior spaces comprised of up to multiple city blocks when creating sets for his photographs.

In Ophelia, Crewdson takes the setting of a flooded suburban house and introduces a floating female corpse. The furniture and style of the interior of the house is very plain and could be almost any older middle income suburban home. The introduction of water, as if the neighborhood has experienced a flood would make for an unsettling photograph, but Crewdson takes the process one step further and introduces a floating corpse to the composition. The introduction of the corpse should make the scene demented, but in a strange way it matches the calm water and adds a weird, all be it morbid, tranquility to the scene. Crewdson divides the aspects of his set for Ophelia into an upper half and a lower half. The upper half of Ophelia is mundane and normal suburbia while the lower half, defined by the water level is mysterious, surreal and sinister.

Source: http://donaldbullock.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/ophelia-by-gregory-credson.html