Gregory Crewdson was commissioned by The New York Times Magazine to make this set of images, conceived as one of the first portfolios in our new portfolio series that was launched in fall 2002. Crewdson, an artist know for his highly cinematic and theatrical photographs depicting surreal suburban scenes, had the idea of doing a series of pictures all made in and around one particular house in Rutland, Vermont, that was kept exactly the same as it had always been, even though it had been unoccupied for a number of years. We enlisted famous actors and actresses, such as Julianne Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow, William Macy, Tilda Swinton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Baker and Agnes Bruckner, to play the roles in the pictures. The photographs were made during the months of August and September 2002 and published in the November 10, 2002 issue.