Gregory Crewdson Built an Entire Beauty Salon for One Photograph
(This is the story behind the photograph, a glimpse into the moment, the process, and the vision that brought it to life.)
Almost nothing in this photograph is quite what it seems.
Gregory Crewdson found the location as an empty storefront. He imagined a beauty salon inside it, then worked with his production team to build one for the photograph. But even after the set was finished, several parts of the picture still did not work as he wanted.
The final photograph had to be built piece by piece.
In my interview with Crewdson, we went through how Madeline’s Beauty Salon was made. He explained what was built, what was removed, how the woman was lit and why the reflection in the mirror is not really a reflection. Each decision changed something inside the same carefully fixed frame.
This is the story of how one Gregory Crewdson photograph came together.
Madeline’s Beauty Salon belongs to Eveningside, a series Crewdson made between 2021 and 2022. Unlike much of the work for which he is known, these photographs are in black and white.
It was not simply a change made at the end. Crewdson and his production team had to think about the entire picture differently.
“That series is in black and white, and that was a great challenge to me. It was the first time I worked with my whole production team in black and white.”
There were references Crewdson already knew well.
“I always loved the whole history of black and white photography and I love film noir and so I used elements of that.”
One of those references entered this photograph before anything was built. Crewdson had found an empty storefront. Looking through its large window, he started imagining what might exist inside it.
“That was an empty storefront when I first saw it and I thought of a scene of kind of hairdresser or something.”
But he already knew something else. The salon would be called Madeline’s.
The name came from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a film in which Madeleine Elster becomes an object of obsession, uncertainty and constructed identity.
“I wanted to call it Madeline’s because that’s a reference to Hitchcock’s Vertigo.”
But at this point, there was still no beauty salon. Crewdson’s team had to make it.
“We built out, we made the sign, signage. We built out the entire interior. We put in the ceiling. We put in the mirror.”
An empty shop became a working photographic set. The sign appeared outside. Inside came the ceiling, mirror and other details needed to make the space believable.
Once everything was ready, Crewdson placed two women inside. One sat in the salon chair. The other was the hairdresser. Then Crewdson looked at the picture.
Something was wrong.
“Originally there were two figures in that picture. There was the woman in the seat, but there was also a hairdresser.”
The problem was not the set. It was not the light. It was the second person.
“She just didn’t look right in the frame. So I took her out in post-production.”
The hairdresser disappeared.
That decision left the seated woman alone inside the large storefront window. Seen from the street, she is surrounded by the salon Crewdson’s team had constructed for her. But she does not appear completely alone. There is another woman in the mirror.
At first, she appears to be the seated woman’s reflection. Her face looks back toward the camera while the physical figure sits with her back partly turned.
But the mirror never produced that reflection.
“The mirror reflection isn’t actually a mirror reflection.”
Crewdson photographed the woman once in her original position. Then the production stopped and her position changed.
“After we shot the first pose, we turned her around and photographed her again, looking towards the camera. And then in post-production, put her in the mirror.”
The two women in the finished photograph are therefore the same person photographed at different moments. One became the figure. The other became her reflection.
“So it created a kind of uncanny relationship between the figure and the reflection.”
There was still another problem to solve.
Light.
The salon needed to look finished in the photograph, but the finished ceiling would make it harder for Crewdson and his team to place lights exactly where they wanted them. So for part of the shoot, the ceiling did not exist.
“We lit her first with a lot of lights on the ceiling or there was no ceiling. So a lot of lights above her.”
With the ceiling open, the team could place lights above the woman without having to hide them inside the finished frame. Only after the figure had been photographed did the ceiling return.
“Then we put in the ceiling afterwards to shoot like a ceiling pass.”
This was possible because the camera remained fixed. Different parts of the scene could be photographed separately and later brought together into the final image. This gave Crewdson something control.
“It’s a way of like being able to light her exactly like we need, but not have the lights in the frame.”
Look at the finished photograph and very little of this process is visible.
The storefront was real, but the beauty salon was built. The hairdresser was photographed, then removed. The mirror is real, but its reflection was made from another photograph. The ceiling appears to have always been there, but it was removed so the woman could be lit. The photograph looks like one quiet moment. It is actually made from many.
All these separate decisions eventually had to disappear into the finished picture.
“I think all those things worked in the end to make a really kind of magical picture or haunting picture outside.”
Making Madeline’s Beauty Salon required Crewdson to keep changing what was in front of his camera. An empty storefront became a salon. Two figures became one. A reflection was created from a second pose. A ceiling disappeared and returned.
Once that photograph finally existed, he was already thinking about the next one.
“It’s a picture that is successful on its own terms.”
In my interview with Crewdson, we went through how Madeline’s Beauty Salon was made. Story Behind The Photograph