Portrait of David Lynch
Photograph by Mark Berry
The director David Lynch, who died this month at seventy-eight, blended a dark surrealism with banal Americana to create hypnotic, dreamlike atmospheres. His plots were cryptic; his characters eccentric and unforgettable; his love of coffee, cherry pie, and Transcendental Meditation, legendary. Lynch was an artist of total originality who invented his own cinema of the unconscious, influencing generations of image-makers. Here, a group of photographers pay homage to the beloved filmmaker.
Gregory Crewdson
I had just begun graduate school at Yale in 1986 when Blue Velvet was released. I went on opening night to 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 it compelled me to turn back to my own work and dig deeper within myself. A series of photographs, Natural Wonder (1991–97), 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, taxidermies of birds and insects, and human body parts morphing with nature in grotesque and bizarre ways. I took 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 I 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, influenced the stories we tell, and informed the way we see the world.
Roe Ethridge
The way I remember it, Scott Vogel’s video class at Atlanta College of Art was the day after a Twin Peaks episode aired on television. Scott would tape it, and we would then watch it as students after having already watched it as rabid fans the night before. The lesson I think Scott was interested in, what he wanted us to grasp, was the way the show somehow passed through the narrows of prime time. We “deconstructed” every episode, though I’m not sure that’s what we were doing. Really it was more like marveling at the skill, the show’s beauty and terror, both sublime and banal. I think what I saw was how a real artist could use the most ubiquitous venue to make the most shocking and radical images and stories. In a way, it was the most American thing ever: Twin Peaks was prime time.
Todd Hido
In 2017, Paul Moakley from Time magazine offered me what is still one of my favorite editorial assignments ever. A new limited series of Twin Peaks was about to air, twenty-five years after its first season, in 1990, changed television storytelling forever. Paul recognized the kinship between David Lynch’s work and mine, the way that we were both concerned with the darker, more uneasy side of American suburban life, and he sent me to northern Washington to shoot a photo-essay inspired by the locations of the original series.
As a native of Kent, Ohio, who had moved to Oakland, California, I had already spent the last fifteen years going up to Washington state, since it served as a visual surrogate for the dark winters of my childhood landscapes. For this photo-essay, I established a working area within a two-hour radius of Snoqualmie and set out to photograph anything that left an impression on me, looking for things that felt as if they had the essence of Lynch’s darkness. Like many great narratives, the final setting was the sum of many parts and places. I made this picture of Mount Si Motel one rainy evening in North Bend, Washington.
Tania Franco Klein
The Lynchian universe is captivating, to say the least, with its intense, colorful, and atmospheric surfaces. Once they catch you, they invite you to experience a dark underbelly full of uncanny symbolism, which is surprisingly constructed with the most ordinary elements.
On a less visual and a more psychological and subtle level, the absurdist and abstract narratives of his films, created with mundane elements, were always more fascinating to me. Surrealism is a term often thought of when describing his masterful work, but the absurdism and broken narratives, full of dark holes and ambiguity, always felt more assimilated to the way I experience life and felt more accurate than a perfectly wrapped storyline in which everything is overexplained. Strange events never felt more seductive and complex than in his universe, and I found it hard to resist incorporating many of these fascinating elements into my practice.
Jarod Lew
I remember watching Blue Velvet for the first time and being captivated by the absurdity of certain scenes in that film. In the dark basement of a suburban home, I sat around with friends as the glow of an early ’90s television filled the room, and the song “Blue Velvet” filled all our ears. I remember asking myself many times, How does one come up with an idea like that? Why does this feel so real? It wasn’t until later in my life that I watched the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life and realized that the scenes I was most perplexed by, truly haunted by, were scenes that came from his experience as a child. His memories had infused his works so seamlessly. It’s powerful to think that our most visionary endeavors can emerge from simply remembering our past.
Alec Soth
I discovered David Lynch as a teenager—the same time I discovered art. Living in exurban Minnesota, I found it miraculous that someone could unearth so much mystery in places like North Carolina (Blue Velvet) and Washington state (Twin Peaks). After visiting his dream worlds, every middle-American street looked like a portal to somewhere dark and magical.
Yelena Yemchuk
Once in a blue moon we are blessed with a visionary artist who can transform our reality. An artist who can pick us up and drop us in an unfamiliar world—a world that feels simultaneously immediate and elusive. A world with so much light and darkness. A world where dreams rule, and time has no rules.
David Lynch, you know what it feels like to be there—in the place beyond description. You have been taking me there since I was fifteen. When I saw Blue Velvet, I came out of the theater a different me. Thank you for being my biggest inspiration and for teaching me to follow my absolute vision and to not be afraid of telling a different story, one that people might not understand. Thank you for inspiring me to work from my dreams and allow chance and accident to coexist with the “plan.” I learned to keep my eyes wide open for mysteries to reveal themselves without ever having to explain them. You are forever the greatest, David Lynch.