Grey Crawford

Viewing Room

Wednesday, 04 September 2024

Grey Crawford

Umbra #14, 1977

Silver gelatin print

50,5 x 66 cm

Grey Crawford was born and raised in Southern California, USA, and was one of the first West Coast artists who challenged the photographic medium through his darkroom experiments with both black and white and color photography. His early 1970s black and white photographs, from his Umbra series, combine the dense urban landscape images of Los Angeles with his darkroom experiments. Inspired by the basic shapes and forms used by the California Hard Edge painters John McLaughlin and Karl Benjamin, Crawford distinguished himself from the popular topographers of that era, such as Lewis Baltz. He infused these geometric forms, utilizing his own masking and filter techniques, which he developed during his studies at the Rochester Institute.

His Umbra series (1975-1979) is composed of black and white silver gelatin prints - photographed throughout the 1970’s in Southern California. By using the darkroom as his palette, Crawford introduces hard-edged, abstract shapes based upon the California painter John McLaughlin’s forms through the use of masks. Grey Crawford incorporates these basic geometric shapes and lines into his photographs, creating his own landscapes, almost like a stage for an undefined play. The shapes become the building blocks by which he establishes his own visual language.