Photographer Gregory Crewdson is known for his staged tableux of everyday suburban scenes. He uses movie lighting and post-production effects to compose dramatically lit and colored images that, in their heightened realism, verge on the surreal. They’re physically accurate and emotionally unsettling, without easy sentimental meaning.
     For his latest project, in an interesting reversal, Crewdson documented the exterior stage sets at Cinecittà, the fabled movie studio in Rome. He worked in a more straightforward way, almost documentary-style, shooting in black and white and using natural light. These stately, evocative prints have been collected in a new book, Sanctuary, and are on view at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York from September 23 through October 30.
     What’s most striking about the scenes is their emptiness. There are no people here and no traces of them: no signage, no litter, no footprints or tire tracks. And yet the architecture of the sets invites occupation. There are plazas, walkways, and triumphal arched entryways. Where has everyone gone? As in the cityscapes of Giorgio DeChirico, the place seems to have been abandoned all at once, frozen in a historic moment by illness or catastrophe. Elements like half-open doors and stairs that lead nowhere have a dream-like resonance.

Critics and fans alike rally behind José González work for good reason. True to form, González’s songs are more impressions than fully fleshed out pieces, but these fragments woven together achieve a grand tapestry of textured soul. Relying on longtime friends Tobias Winterkorn (organ, Moog) and Elias Araya (drums), Fields is a tranquil compendium of González’s strengths. Rife with intimacy and restrained experimentation, Fields is the follow up to the Gothenburg trio’s EP debut, Black Refuge, and though it has been five years, the contributions complement the velvety smooth vocals of González. The formula is simple: slowly build a song layer by layer and ease out after the climax. Transitioning at a stately pace, the soft percussion on “It’s Alright” balances the vivaciousness of “Off Point”, only to transform into the lushly finger-plucked “Rope & Summit”. At times, Fields is sparse, infused with rock, or echoing the psychedelic — regardless, it always lives up to González’s expectedly spellbinding work.

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That old saying (and secret dictum of science fiction) “the future is now” is rarely as appropriate a descriptor as it is for William Gibson’s latest novel, Zero History (Putnam, $26.95). For the past twenty-five years, Gibson has been churning out, with a machinelike consistency, remarkable works of science fiction — all the while edging their settings backwards, closer and closer to the present.
     Having established himself as one of our finest dealers of far-flung futures, Gibson’s decision to set his first novels of the new century — Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007) — in a future barely distinguishable from the present came as something of a surprise. Gone were the razor girls, neural uplinks and dope-smoking Rastafarian spaceship pilots that had for so long characterized his work; in their stead were viral internet footage, transnational marketing conspiracies and something akin to a 9/11 induced cultural tinnitus, the nascent whine of the old rhythms of the world unfurrowing. All of a sudden, the future felt more like the now than ever before.
     Zero History marks the third, and perhaps final, installment in Gibson’s newest series. The three novels share the same near future world, as well as many of its characters, preoccupations and flaws.

Having focused his lens on illegal logging practices in Madagascar and on the thirty-two coal-fired power stations in his native England for past investigative photo essays, reportage photographer Toby Smith now turns to the promising renewable energy sources of the future. For his first exhibition in the planned series that he is calling The Renewables Project, he has captured snapshots of a power generation scheme that is actually far from new and has in fact been supplying electricity for decades essentially free of carbon emissions.
     Over the course of three months last winter in the Scottish Highlands, Smith exhaustively studied the region’s hydroelectric dams through his camera. With simple composition and framing, and by using long exposures, he has produced images that affectingly convey the vastness of the engineering systems at work and of the surrounding environment. The project is consistent with his regular approach of examining the nexus between ecology and human activity in a manner that brings to mind the Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky’s reliably astonishing industrial landscapes. Before heading to China, where he will continue to explore alternative energy sources, Smith spoke to PLANET about the photos that he hopes will inspire an honest debate.

Imagine you are in Paris, in 1981, a fashion editor sitting in the front row. You are subjected to a sex, drugs, and rock and roll diet of Mugler and Gaultier on one side and the bourgeois propriety of Yves Saint-Laurent and Chanel on the other. Fashion is a luxury and looks it. But the clothes that you are seeing right now, by designers from Japan (where you’ve probably never been) Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo (whose names you probably can’t pronounce) are so radically different — black, tattered, oversized, pointedly inelegant — that you are subjected to a dose of cultural insta-shock. Fast-forward to today: walk into any chain store and you see the signs of these designers’ heritage, unfinished seams, holes, distressing. These are now as familiar, acceptable, and safe for mass consumption as Barney is for children.
    But you are no longer in 1981, Dorothy, and Japanese fashion has moved on. A new generation of fashion designers and fashion subcultures has sprung up, no less exciting than the legendary Yamamoto and Kawakubo. Japan Fashion Now, a new exhibit at the Museum at FIT explores the links between the old and new generations.
    The exhibition, featuring more than 100 garments, is organized in two parts. Upon entering you are greeted with a display of the work by the holy trinity of Japanese fashion — Miyake, Yamamoto, and Kawakubo — flanked by the less known names like Matsuda. These garments are from the ’70s and ’80s.

Chilly Gonzales is the Philip Glass of the iPad set. But that might be selling the pianist-cum-rapper-cum-producer-cum-actor with the cartoon-character name very short. Gonzales’ latest full-length, Ivory Tower, is the soundtrack to a film of the same name, in which he stars alongside Peaches and Tiga in a chess-battling love triangle. Ivory’s primarily instrumental piano compositions alternate between jumping, swing-y, saucy grooves, aggressive belligerence, and inquisitive suspense. However, it is live where Gonzales really shines, as I recently caught him at Café Largo, in Los Angeles. Touring under the marquee “Piano Talk Show”, Gonzales mans a beat-up old upright piano, whose innards are exposed with the front panel ripped and worn off. Gonzales plays emotively. Fingers fly over the keys, sometimes with such speed that one can’t actually see his digits. Looking like a rabbi in a dressing gown and slippers, Gonzales’ stage presence is commanding, and hilarious. The self-aggrandizing virtuoso claims himself as such, but does so with tongue firmly planted in cheek, and you forgive him for it because you know that he is, in fact, an absolute musical genius.

Despite her label’s pastoral emblem, Los Angeles native and up-and-coming fashion designer Kimberly Ovitz’s aesthetic is distinctly more downtown avant-garde than Upper East Side traditionalist. In her label’s third major collection, Ovitz maintains command of her slightly off-kilter interpretation of the iconic equestrian lifestyle so key to American sportswear.
     Ovitz’s spring/summer 2011 collection centers around the colors white, black, oatmeal and navy, and combines asymmetric cuts for a very graphic effect. Yet Ovitz’s signature architectural aesthetic is counterbalanced by a restrained use of detail, adding dimension and softness to edgy designs. Consistent with her homerun fall 2010 collection, Ovitz’s new effort reveals a collection that buyers and consumers alike should flock to for its versatility.
     What truly sets Ovitz’s work apart from other rising designers, though, is her eye. Ovitz boasts an intimidating resume: internships at J.Crew, the Chanel design atelier in Paris, W magazine, and with the heralded fashion photographer Herb Ritts. She also completed her undergraduate degree at Brown University before attending Parsons School of Design. After working at contemporary lines such as Imitation of Christ and Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent, Ovitz developed a proprietary stretch fabric and was ready to venture on her own in 2009.

No other contemporary architect has a formal language as seductive and expressive as Zaha Hadid’s. Her work has sidestepped the conventional forms of modern architecture (rigid boxes and planes) for something altogether different (warped and tilted vectors) with complete assurance.
     Hadid’s new museum for contemporary art in Rome, MAXXI: Zaha Hadid Architects. In addition to a portfolio of masterful photographs by Iwan Baan, the volume contains insightful essays about the building’s design and development, architectural plans, detail drawings, and construction photos. It’s eye-opening to understand the immense coordination efforts, and also the vast grid of steel reinforcing, that were required to get this building up.
     Since the project spanned from 1999, when Hadid’s office first won a design competition, to 2009, when construction was completed, MAXXI is a powerful summation of the ideas the architect explored during these fruitful years. Chief among them is the notion that buildings aren’t static constructions but complex, mutable entities that emerge from fields of energy and activity at a site. That idea is given full, clear expression at MAXXI. The building’s long curved walls follow the outline of the L-shaped site and retract and expand in response to adjacent street grids. The compressed, overlapping forms recreate the density of traditional Roman city blocks, and echo adjacent military barracks, train tracks, and the curve of the Tiber River. The structure looks strikingly contemporary and still sits comfortably within this very old city.

For David Andrew Sitek, a member of the unique and eclectic TV on The Radio and a producer, who has helped shape the sound of bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Liars, it’s easy to get typecast. Sitek was key in the creation of the “New Brooklyn” scene that first emerged ten years ago, but since then has been working hard to defy the expectations of his pedigree.
     Sitek’s self-proclaimed production style is a wrench in the system, and is determined to destroy all he deems boring in music. It’s an ethos Sitek has carried over to his new pop project, Maximum Balloon. The album marks a somewhat drastic shift into unapologetically fun dance music, a genre Sitek likes because it’s “more about the ability to get inside the song, not worry about other stuff, and not be self conscious”.
     Fortunately, Sitek didn’t have to explore this new territory alone. For Maximum Balloon, he enlisted the help of a different vocalist for each track, a structure that came about totally by accident. “I was kind of dicking around, which is how I started the song “Tiger”. I was just messing around, wrote lyrics, and I tried to sing it, which just sounded terrible. Then Aku [Orraca-Tetteh, from indie rock band Dragons of Zynth] came over, he sang it, it sounded incredible, and then I knew I couldn’t sing on any of the other songs,” says Sitek.

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