“I’ve always said that I think every artist has one central story to tell,” photographer Gregory Crewdson says on a call from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where he lives and works. “And they circle around that story, over and over again, over a lifetime, reinventing aspects of it and challenging others and trying to push things forward. But at the core of it, it’s like the central preoccupations remain fixed.”

The concept is particularly timely for the photographer, who for the past three-and-a-half decades has been constructing gripping images that call to mind film stills, as his first-ever retrospective opened in May at the Albertina in Vienna. Later this month, the eponymous exhibition takes new form with the release of Gregory Crewdson, its 280-page catalogue edited by the Albertina’s chief curator of photography Walter Moser and published by Prestel. The book features more than 300 photographs and production stills that examine the complexities of American suburbia, be it through someone wandering a parking lot, shirtless and unmoored, or a twosome’s forlorn gazes into a television as its glow illuminates a basement, paired with writings from directors David Fincher and Matthieu Orléan, and novelist Emily St. John Mandel, among others.

For Crewdson, the process of revisiting nearly 40 years of work was “complicated,” but led him to draw parallels between his earliest endeavors and present-day work. “It’s interesting in that on some basic level everything’s changed and then on another level, nothing’s changed really,” he says. “When I look back at pictures I made when I was in graduate school, [those are] the first pictures in the show, they’re not that dissimilar in terms of the basic concerns—on a much more modest scale, of course.”

In advance of the catalogue’s release, Crewdson spoke with Vanity Fair about the possibility of making the switch from photography to directing feature-length films, and the story he’s been telling all these years.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Vanity Fair: Before graduate school, when you were a student at Purchase College, did you feel that your work had the same thread?

Yes. I arrived at photography at SUNY Purchase, basically, so fairly late in a certain way. I do remember when I was very young, my father bringing me to the [Diane] Arbus retrospective at MoMA, and that was my first inkling [of] how powerful pictures can be psychologically. But it wasn’t until undergraduate when I first took my photo I class and saw that first image come up in the developer and realized that, oh, this is something I kind of understand. I was dyslexic, still am, I think. So the idea of a frozen, still image, it’s something I could read. And even back in SUNY Purchase, I had some very influential teachers both in photography and film theory. So that’s when I first drew a line, I think, between movies and still photography. And that’s been consistent all the way through.

The book has a great essay by David Fincher, in which he writes about cinema being a fundamental inspiration in your life. You’ve previously talked about Blue Velvet and David Lynch being influential in your process. Are there other films that you keep returning to again and again?

Well, firstly, Fincher, I’m a huge fan of Fincher. We’re the same age, basically. So, there’s all these inspirational influences and texts, movies, that we’re bonded by. But there’s certain films that you see when you’re coming of age as an artist—the music you listen to, the movies you watch, the photography, whatever it is—and those become the urtext. Those are the gigantic things that follow you for the rest of your life. So for me, it was Lynch, but it was also [Steven] Spielberg and so many movies. The films that find this intersection between ordinary life and theatricality is the thing that I’m most interested in in my own work, and I think it’s reflected in the movies and the art, [Edward] Hopper and [Diane] Arbus and [John] Cheever, all those people that I feel connected to.

Do you ever toy around with the idea of making a feature-length film yourself?

We are somewhat in the process of it. And I mean, the challenging thing if it ever comes to life will be how to bring everything I learned as a still photographer into that arena. But there’s this, I’m highly aware also that my still photographs occupy this very interesting or unusual intersection between still pictures and movie making. I define that kind of little terrain a little bit, so it would be a challenge. But challenges are good.

Prestel, which published your book, describes your work as “a tender meditation on the American Dream deferred.” Has the idea of the “American Dream” changed for you over the years?

It’s interesting because particularly in Europe, my work always is channeled through or perceived as a critique or a commentary, and I never really think about it in those terms. I think in terms of my own personal preoccupations about some sense of loss or wanting to make a connection, and if the pictures reflect something larger, then that’s great, but it’s not one of my overall concerns.

I mean, that “dream” is really important to me, in general, because I hope that my pictures have that cross section between something that feels familiar and something that feels dreamlike, and maybe that condition is becoming more and more relevant to all of us as we live in this moment that’s really hard to fathom, but I want the viewer to make those connections or observations. One of the great things about photographs, or art in general, it’s like you make it and you have to separate yourself from it and your intentions and let people complete the story on their own.

You said earlier that every artist has one story to tell. What’s yours?

Good question. If I knew I wouldn’t have to make the pictures, I guess. I could hint at it, but if I was pushed to try to say it simply, I would say it’s something about searching for something that’s just slightly outside of your grasp. I think almost every picture in one way or another is shaped out of some search for something that’s elusive, and that is usually done through light. All photographs are made with light, but I think mine specifically are concerned with using light as a narrative, because photographs are so limited in terms of the story they can tell. There’s no dialogue. There’s no before and after. There’s no soundtrack. For me, the form, the light is the thing that tells the story.

How close are you getting between the image in your mind’s eye and what the final image is? Do you feel like those are the same, or you’re never achieving exactly what you see?

You never do. It’s necessarily you don’t because if you did, then it would be disappointing. I obviously have a preoccupation with order, trying to create some kind of perfect image, but something always goes wrong or something happens outside of your control. And to me, that’s where the magic of picture-making happens. It’s where my need to create a perfect world moves against something that prevents me from doing it.

How much of yourself are you seeing in the images when you’re looking back at the retrospective?

A lot, but it’s veiled and it’s not conscious either. I do think that all photographers in one way or another have a slightly alienated view of the world. Even the act of looking through a viewfinder is an act of separation, and there’s always something you’re fascinated with that’s slightly forbidden or secret. And so that’s that sense that is reflected in all my pictures. A slight fascination with something, but a slight distance. It’s kind of like a therapist actually, if you think about it. There’s a relationship between the therapist and the patient and a lot of secrets being told, but it’s formal.

Gregory Crewdson is now on view at the Albertina Museum in Vienna through September 8, 2024.