SAN DIEGO, CA.- The San Diego Museum of Art presents Gregory Crewdson: Dream House, on view from August 15, 2015 through November 10, 2015. The American photographer Gregory Crewdson is best known for his uncanny images of deceptively serene suburban life.

In Dream House, Crewdson reworks the American small town into a stage for inexplicable, often disturbing events, using well-known celebrities in eerie, ambiguous scenes. Among the actors featured in these large-scale photographs are Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tilda Swinton, Gwyneth Paltrow, and William H. Macy.

In creating what he calls "frozen moments," Crewdson reinvents the genre by using film techniques of building elaborate, highly produced sets to create carefully composed photographs of extraordinary detail. Each image is polished and technically perfect, but still somewhat undone, leaving the viewer to envision what comes before and after. Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dreamlike vision of filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and David Lynch.

In 2002, Crewdson received a commission from the New York Times Magazine that resulted in this 12-part portfolio titled Dream House. The cinematic character of these frozen vignettes is underscored by the use of Hollywood actors, whose celebrity contrasts with the anonymity of their environments. Crewdson portrays the isolation and melancholy of suburban life through a surreal sense of theatre in a style reminiscent of a high-budget Hollywood production.

The 12-piece exhibition is curated by Ariel Plotek, Ph.D., Associate Curator of Modern Art at The San Diego Museum of Art.