By Amy Conway • Photographs by Bill Wright
“Darkness and light, beauty and sadness, reality and fiction—I’m always trying to find an opposition,” says Gregory Crewdson of the large-scale cinematic photographs he is famous for. The home outside of Great Barrington he shares with Juliane Hiam, his partner in life and collaborator in work, also happens to have two very different sides that come together in a beguiling whole.
Within the circa-1860 building that was built as a Methodist church, there’s a space they call the sanctuary, with a soaring ceiling, modernist wall of books, and feeling of serenity that nods to its ecclesiastical roots—a fitting and showstopping setting for this creative couple. And then there’s their private living space, tucked behind pocket doors, where they spend much of their time. It’s human-scale, practical, and cozy, ideal for cooking, which Crewdson enjoys, and watching movies together.
The notion of home is a central theme for him. “It is one of my favorite words,” he said. “Almost every picture, in one way or another, is about the idea of home.” Crewdson is from Park Slope, Brooklyn, but spent a lot of time at his family’s cabin in Becket while growing up, and those ties drew him back to the area.
Hiam has also always had a profound connection to the Berkshires, personally and creatively. She is from Becket herself, and worked in Los Angeles as a writer/director before returning after her daughter was born. Once back home, she wrote stage plays, focused on historical figures that lived and worked in the Berkshires, for Shakespeare & Company and Ventfort Hall.
While still living in New York himself, Crewdson would stage his famously elaborate photo shoots—akin to a movie shoot, with a crew of dozens—in the Berkshires. A connection led Hiam to casting work on one of Crewdson’s Berkshires productions, with others following.
Crewdson came to the Berkshires full time around 2010, after a hard divorce, when he moved into the old church (their property includes the building next door, once a firehouse and now his studio). The living space was bare bones. “It was almost like he was camping out here in the beginning,” said Hiam. “Very minimal.”
During that difficult time, Crewdson wasn’t making pictures. “He wasn’t able to work,” said Hiam. “It was as though he was trying to reconnect with something.” They slowly became good friends (as did their children; Crewdson has two and Hiam has four, all now in their late teens to mid 20s), and during the winter months, Crewdson and Hiam would cross-country ski together. One day, just as their friendship was on the verge of becoming something more, they were out on a trail when Crewdson had what Hiam describes as a “sense memory” of skiing with his brother in the same spot when they were young. It was the spark he needed to begin creating again.
The trail was called Cathedral of the Pines. “That’s where the title came from,” said Crewdson, referring to the 2013–2014 series of hauntingly beautiful photographs that is said to be his most personal work. Hiam appears as a model in some scenes and nature serves as a symbol of renewal. Crewdson followed those works with An Eclipse of Moths (2018–2019), staged in Pittsfield. With their downed streetlights and abandoned cars, the images are a commentary on postindustrial New England towns. Eveningside (2021–2022), the final series in what was conceived as a trilogy, was also photographed in the area: In showing people, many in working uniforms, through shop windows, in mirrors, or standing, motionless, on the street of what could be Anytown, USA, Crewdson creates a tension between interior and exterior worlds.
Two of the members of the Eveningside crew were production designer Jesika Farkas and set builder Mike Bedard—she’s also an interior designer, living in Kingston, New York, and he’s a contractor based in Pittsfield. (They are also a couple and “we wouldn’t be the first romance that came out of their shoots,” said Farkas.) They became the design-build team that would help Crewdson and Hiam reimagine the church as a more functional and beautiful place to live.
Earlier renovations had obscured original architectural details, like the immense windows; there were “weird geometries” and an oak colonial staircase running through the middle of the space, said Farkas. It was a big project, to be done in phases, they decided.
On a practical level, one of the challenges of living in a vast church is heating and cooling the space. “It’s not only difficult, it’s wasteful,” said Crewdson. Enclosing the kitchen space, where they spend a lot of time, was top priority. They added pocket doors so they can control the temperature separately. The renovation transformed the cramped original kitchen into a generous pantry—“a real workhorse,” said Farkas. A roomier space for cooking and relaxing was created with lots of windows, simple maple cabinets, open shelving, and soapstone countertops. A comfy sectional and big television make the room inviting.
The next phase included the stunningly simple bedroom above the kitchen. What was a dark, concave space is now bright and serene. There are windows behind the bed and glass transoms trimmed in black wood enclosing the space; they make the room quiet and hold the heat while disappearing visually and allowing a view of the church’s soaring ceiling and gorgeous wooden trusses. For the sanctuary, they all puzzled over different design options, eventually settling on floating a new staircase along the side of a dramatic bookcase, centered in the church. “Everything became about symmetry and understated beauty,” said Farkas. “The church shines with this very simple box inside it that’s modern and clean.” For the decor, Annie Selke, founder of the Annie Selke Companies, consulted, bringing in rugs and other accents and combining them with pieces the couple already had as well as some new purchases.
The space now functions beautifully—but the team isn’t done. There are plans to revamp the choir loft and main entry and add a new powder room and a second story to the studio, for additional bedrooms to easier accommodate the rest of the family. A church and firehouse, after all, weren’t built to be lived in this way. But Crewdson thinks it’s no coincidence that a church is where they found their home. “We like to feel peaceful,” he said, “and uncluttered.” And what’s more, although they would call themselves spiritual rather than religious, “there is a religious element to the work,” said Crewdson. “It’s about searching for meaning.”
An Artist’s Process
Crewdson describes his life as an ongoing cycle of three stages—he’s in preproduction, production, or postproduction. Right now, it’s preproduction. All his photographs begin with location, which means exploring the area he already knows so well. As he drives around the Berkshires, “I go over and over again to places that I’ve been a million times, just looking for that intersection or an interior that feels like it’s part of my world,” he said. “It’s kind of opaque and open-ended, but there’s a beautiful leisure to that.” The process can take months. Once found, the locations inspire ideas for possible scenarios.
“That’s where Juliane comes in,” said Crewdson, who is Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at Yale, where he has taught for some 25-plus years. Hiam writes a description for each planned picture—essentially a one-page screenplay—that is shared with Crewdson’s crew (including longtime director of photography, Richard Sands, and camera operator, Daniel Karp) so they have a shared understanding of the stories they’re telling.
When production begins, they may close down streets, bring in prop cars and other unwieldy equipment, light things on fire, or create faux floods (all done with permission, in collaboration with the towns). It’s like a film set, but “has a very different feel,” said Crewdson, because “we’re all there just to get one moment. If everything goes right, there’s a beautiful moment where it all comes together.”
Postproduction happens in his studio, the old firehouse right next to the church they live in. “We’re very self-sufficient here,” said Crewdson. “We don’t use labs.” The scouting he’s doing this fall may result in a shoot next spring.For updates and information on Crewdson’s work, visit gregorycrewdson.substack.com.
