Forever, In Dreams
In appreciation of David Lynch
I HAD JUST BEGUN graduate school at Yale in 1986 when Blue Velvet was released. I went on opening night at the York Square Cinema, and the film changed my life. I immediately connected to Lynch’s take on the American landscape, its veneer of domestic order, and his exploration into its darker undercurrents. These were themes I had already been exploring myself, but Lynch conveyed them in such a shocking and visually beautiful way, with such immediacy and confidence.
Blue Velvet seemed new and yet strangely familiar – the very definition of the uncanny – like a dream I could only partially remember or understand. As with all great art, it left me with more questions than answers, and compelled me to turn back to my own work and dig deeper within myself.
My series of photographs, Natural Wonder (1991-1997) almost entirely grew out of my obsession with the opening sequence of Blue Velvet. I constructed tabletop dioramas of neighborhoods with picket fences, garden flowers, taxidermy birds and insects; human body parts morphing with nature in grotesque and bizarre ways.
It took me nearly a decade to work through this exhaustive artistic exercise, having absorbed Lynch’s influence and needing to express it in my own way. I was then able to move on to other concerns in my work, but would not have gotten there in the same way without Lynch – which is how art and inspiration works.
Lynch’s legacy is even more vast than his body of work, for it touched so many other artists, the stories we tell, and informed the way we see the world.
In more recent years, I had a chance to cross paths with Lynch a few times, and I was able to express how much his work meant to me. I am very grateful I had that opportunity.
He was always cordial, polite, interested, and generous. But like his work, there was also something mysterious and opaque about him — and slightly unknowable. To me this shows a true continuity between his life and his art, the way he expresses so much and so little at the same time. He raised questions we didn’t even know we had but offered no answers. He was a true artist and visionary.
Editor’s note: A version of this text appeared earlier on Aperture.com. Posts on the Crewdson Trail Log are written and assembled by Juliane Hiam based on Gregory’s words and direction.
Thank you so much for sharing this—and I’m not at all surprised that you appreciate his work so much!
I think there might be two types of David Lynch fans: Those who find comfort in the veneer seem to appreciate his vivid imagination and his depictions of life’s undersides. Then there are those for whom the underside feels more familiar. They’re the ones who feel a kindredship with Lynch and his stories. For me, he made it okay that I saw the world in that kind of a way, and that something beautiful can be shared by expressing it through art. I’m really grateful who he was and what he did.