Help me find a photographer's name

Cafe Society
1

Long story. I was in the Strand downtown a number of years ago and thumbing through the art books there. I saw one that was interesting but didn’t note the photographer’s name. Now I want to find it, but don’t live in NY any more. Here’s what I remember, but don’t shoot me because I don’t have the vocabulary to describe properly:

The photos can considered surreal.
They are all tableaux, that I recall, i.e., there are no action photos.

Here is one that I can recall, a man is in the middle of his living room on his knees. He is digging into the middle of the floor with his hands which appears to not be a floor, but dirt/lawn. Perhaps there is a woman in the background looking distraught.

Another I can remember. This one is an exterior, a very wide angle shot encompassing a lot of different actions. There is a crashed car, the hood up and/or steam coming out of the engine. A man is, elsewhere in the photo, standing at a person’s door as the other stands looking at him.

The shots are all meticulously staged, so staged that they appear, as I stated above, surreal.

I don’t know anything about photography, so I cannot know how famous this photographer is, but thanks for any help you can give.

2

Do you remember if the same shutterbug had an image that smashed together an escalator with a beach?

3

Specifically, Scott Mutter?

(Although there are other artists who do this general sort of thing… but this is the one I could pull a name for.)

4

I don’t believe that’s it, but thanks for the try. This photographer works in color, at least some of the time. And the shots are lit in very unconventional ways. Very moody, almost like soft stage lighting.

5

I was going to guess Robert ParkeHarrison until you mentioned that he worked in color. good luck finding the photographer.

6

Try the Wiki for “photomontage”… assuming that the artist was creating photographic montages and not photos of a carefully prepared actual dirt floor, etc.

7

I believe the photographer you are looking for is Gregory Crewdson.

The first photograph you referenced; the man in his living room…

8

That is exactly it. Thank you sir, very good!