Analyze a photogrpah - Essay Example

Un d (2001) by Gregory Crewdson Gregory Crewdson’s staged photograph “Un d 2001”, also referred to as “Ophelia”, depicts a woman in her night clothes apparently drowning but in a drawing room. Crewdson is known for photographing these orchestrated scenes that bring out the surreal in a scene of the otherwise humdrum urban American home. In this particular photograph, Crewdson draws from the tragic condition of Ophelia in Hamlet and interprets it against a more contemporary setting. The figure of Ophelia has long been symbolic of the silencing of women in literature and in the larger context of society itself.

Crewdson uses the same principle to create his work. It is interesting to note that the artistic representations of Ophelia changes media over time as well. Starting from the famous oil on canvas painting of Ophelia by John Everett Millais, the more haunting painting of Ophelia by Pierre Auguste Cot to the rich, pastoral representation by painter Henry Nelson O’ Neil, the image of the manic depressive drowning herself seemed to have struck a chord with several artists over the ages. Crewdson recognises this timeless quality of the character and chooses to interpret it himself also but in the different, more contemporary, medium of film.

Studying the picture closely reveals how the same motif of female suppression persists in history. Here, the scene is not a forest and a river, but a regular drawing room. The drawing room itself, although not overtly outrageous, is extremely surrealistic and eerie in some ways. The most visible evidence of its unnatural condition, of course, is the water that appears to flood the room. The still water with the woman’s hand partly submerged in it appears almost frozen and lends the entire scene a rigid, menacing quality.

The drawing room is heavily furnished, almost stifling. In the little space that we can see, there are two sofas, a bookcase, a coffee table, a coat hanger, a lamp, pictures, plants, numerous books, LP records, a glass and what looks like a vial of medicine, and even a staircase with a low cupboard on the landing. This excess of banal, material items in the scene hint at the reason behind the woman’s drowning. The woman herself looks exceedingly calm. She is dressed in her nightclothes, a symbol that is often evoked in popular media to represent the repressed housewife who only gets some time to contemplate her situation before bed (E.g. This image is used as a motif in the film The Hours).

The glass of water and the bottle next to it suggest she might have taken something to kill herself. There is a bathrobe on the staircase railing as well as bath slippers, almost as if she was preparing for her drowning like one does for a bath. Within the photograph, there are photographs that it might be instructive to study. The three pictures on the wall are of a young girl, an older man, and a young woman respectively. There are also a couple of family pictures on the bookcase. These could be representations of different stages of a person’s life; the family might also signify another reason for the housewife’s repression; they could even be an ironic suggestion of how although decorated on the wall, this woman’s loved ones do not understand her, something that might lead to her desire of committing suicide.

Crewdson recognises the potential of the Ophelia myth and uses it to reveal how even in the present day the situation can be the same. The pastoral scenes are replaced by a drawing room, but the motivations of the character remain the same.