GREAT BARRINGTON — Every artist must endure certain vicissitudes: They come with the job description. But few artists cycle to such an extreme degree as photographer Gregory Crewdson, profiled in Ben Shapiro’s immersive new documentary “Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters,” which opens at the Coolidge Corner Theatre on Friday.

To create his eerie, hyper-realist, yet ultimately enigmatic scenes of down-market malaise, Crewdson begins his creative process in a receptive, solitary phase — his “favorite part” of the process. He’ll swim for miles in a Berkshires lake, waiting for an image to surface, or cruise the back roads that tourists rarely see, in search of a seemingly ordinary setting that conveys just the right mix of “regret or something haunted or something just outside of grasp — some sense of loss.”