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Barbara Crane’s Photography at Centre Pompidou

Her First Major Monographic Exhibition in Europe Features Over 200 Works

October 24, 2024

The work of the late ID alum Barbara Crane (1928–2019) is currently on exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It’s her first major exhibition in Europe, and it brings together more than 200 works—some of which have  been acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne.

In partnership with the Barbara B. Crane Trust, the exhibition focuses on the first 25 years her career—this includes her time studying at the Institute of Design with Aaron Siskind in the 1960s.

Her work is remarkable for the synthesis it achieves between the American straight photography tradition and a more experimental sensibility, inherited from European avant-garde movements, typical of teachings of the Chicago school [the Institute of Design]. She combines total freedom towards the medium with technical perfectionism, thus setting her apart from her contemporaries.
—Artdaily.com
Barbara Crane, Human Forms, 1965

Barbara Crane, Human Forms, 1965 © Barbara B. Crane Trust

From Artdaily.com:

Human Forms, 1964-1968

Taken with a 4×5 inch view camera as part of her degree at the Institute of Design in Chicago, the Human Forms series testifies to Barbara Crane’s early research into light, volume and line. Unable to go out because she had to look after her children, the artist decided to photograph them. Without ever showing their faces, she focused on the contours of their anonymous bodies, reduced to pure light forms. Crane explained that she was seeking to “produce something like a sketch delineated by clear black lines”. Her experimental approach to photography, a core aspect of the classes given at ID, became central to her work and would remain its underlying matrix.

Crane’s work at ID was marked by visual experimentation, and she continued to evolve long into her career. More of her work, including from the Human Forms series, is available on her website.

She explained her approach in an artist’s statement in 2002:

Though I build on past experience, I attempt to eradicate previous habits of seeing and thinking.
—Barbara Crane

Crane’s legacy includes her her vast body of work as well as her impact as a longtime educator—she was a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly 30 years.

At one point, most major faculty of photography around the country studied at or had some connection to ID. In addition to Barbara Crane, Nathan Lerner, Richard Nickel, and Arthur Siegel were all members of the ID community.

This chapter of ID’s history is covered in our exhibition, “ID@85: 85 Years of Making the Future,” which is also available digitally.

Though ID no longer has a program focused on photography, the same philosophy underlying the approaches of famed ID photographers remains. Today’s ID students continue to operate at the newest frontiers. They continue to experiment with emerging technologies, examining and revealing new approaches and new forms, and considering humans, systems, and ways of making them visible.

According to photography historian and ID professor emeritus John Grimes, Barbara never stopped learning and discovering:

She pursued all the possibilities of camera vision throughout her career and never followed fashion. She never stopped investigating the possibilities of the photographic image.
—John Grimes, ID Professor Emeritus 
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