Guest Column: HOMEWARD BOUND
by Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo
Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and I met many decades ago through our mutual friend, author A. M. Homes, one snowy night in New York. We then crossed paths for some years before we realized we had a mutual Becket, MA connection, which greatly deepened our friendship. I was telling her about the place I love to cross-country ski, and my favorite trail, Cathedral of the Pines, when she revealed that the winding dirt road deep in the Becket woods that leads there, Leonhardt Road, is named after her family. -Gregory
AS I REFLECT on the meaning of “homeward bound,” I return to one of the places in my heart that I think of as home … the Roanoke Valley. I arrived as a freshman in the early 1970s to attend Roanoke College and was amazed to see the Blue Ridge Mountains rising in the distance from every classroom window. I watched as they turned from green to violet, then to flame red and orange, and finally faded to grayish-brown as each season passed, marking my first year in Southwest Virginia. Half a century later, I continue to spend a great deal of time there both as a trustee of Roanoke College and the Taubman Museum of Art. To this day, my heart still swells with the pleasure of sentimental memories when I fly between those mountains to return to the place in which I joyously came of age.
The splendor of my natural surroundings at college vividly reminded me of my childhood summers spent in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, at my grandmother’s summer home outside the town of Becket, one that was perched on the edge of a large mountain pond, and is now a site populated (happily) by the ghosts of past generations of my family. This is another place closely associated with the intimate sensation of home.
The photographer, Gregory Crewdson, shared similar summer experiences in Becket at his parents’ country home, just down the mountain from mine. Although our summers overlapped, I did not meet Gregory until decades later in New York City, as he was beginning to receive critical acclaim for his photography. I don’t believe I met someone who shared the same reverence and nostalgia for a geographical place that most visitors to the Berkshires overlook and never visit.
Over the decades, and in various series of photographs such as Twilight (1998-2002), Beneath the Roses (2003-2008), Cathedral of the Pines (2013-2014) An Eclipse of Moths (2018-1019) and Eveningside (2021-2022), Gregory Crewdson revisits a select group of Berkshires towns (Becket, Lee, Pittsfield, and North Adams) as the backdrop for his photographic fantasies. Themes of loneliness, rapture, abandonment and self discovery all play out in the cinematic quality inherent in his work. For Gregory, the landscape is as important as the characters who populate it. He returns home for inspiration, over and over again.
Two summers ago, as Trustee Liaison of the Leadership Travel Group at the Taubman Museum of Art, I felt it was only natural to explore the Berkshires on our inaugural art adventure. I love knitting together the separate pieces of my life, my childhood with my life right now; I love bringing my new friends together to meet my old ones; and I love celebrating the backdrop of my childhood summers through the vision and work of artists who live there now.
Gregory welcomed our travel group into his studio as part of that journey and showed us his latest body of work called Eveningside. The series is shot in black and white, a symphony of shadow and light that is steeped in ambiguity. In particular, one image, Morningside Home for Women, captured our group’s imagination:
A young woman pauses in the middle of an empty street as her taxi rolls away, a singular hardshell suitcase sits behind her. Evening begins to settle in. She is wearing a hospital bracelet, loose fitting clothing and slippers. She faces a row of multi-family houses adorned with numerous electric meters, all connected by a tangle of telephone wires overhead—yet no one seems home. There are no lights inside any of the houses save for a single ray spilling out onto a front porch. It appears to bathe the pale skin of the lone woman momentarily elevating it to alabaster. And it barely illuminates a sign, “Morningside Home for Women”.
I ask myself as I study this photograph now:
Is the woman arriving at a new destination - or is she returning home?
Is she world-weary or is she a warrior?
Is she searching for safety while weathering a personal storm?
Is she, like so many of us right now, searching for the familiar in a world that is shifting and changing around us?
Or …
Is hers a restorative passage, one that is just now beginning?
Will it lead her to new perspectives, a new beginning, a new way of life?
Are we on a journey always pushing forward? Or should we pause, like the woman in Gregory’s photograph, to turn inward and search for the space that can revive us instead?
This is Gregory Crewdson’s gift to us, his viewers—a singular, transcendent moment: what happens before and after in the photograph is ours alone to ponder or embellish. He gives us the moment, and we let it lead us home.
Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo is a philanthropist and an ardent patron of contemporary art. She has served as a trustee and an officer at multiple arts organizations, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Taubman Museum of Art, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Creative Time, RxArt, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She is a freelance writer, and her articles have been featured in periodicals such as the Harvard Business Review, Artspace, Countryside, Next, Decorating/Remodeling, American Homestyle, Victorian Homes and Gardens, Flair, and Miami Home. She frequently writes essays for contemporary art exhibition catalogs. She currently resides in Austin, TX.
This essay was originally published in Artemis Journal. “Born out of writing workshops held for victims of domestic violence in Southwest Virginia, Artemis Journal has advocated for social justice since 1977. Artemis Journal is published yearly, supporting fair trade policies, artists, and women-based businesses. Ten percent of earnings are donated to a women’s shelter for victims of domestic violence and their families in Southwest Virginia.” You can learn more about the publication, its founder and editor Jeri Rogers, and its mission, here.
The Crewdson Trail Log is edited by Juliane Hiam, in close collaboration with Gregory.
Very interesting introduction to what looks like a very interesting body of work!!! 😎
Such an honor to have Gregory's photograph on our 2025 cover of Artemis Journal. Thank you Joanne Cassullo for making this dream come true!
Jeri Rogers, Editor and Founder Artemis Journal