Barbara Crane

Exhibition: Repeats (1969 - 1978)

Dates: 12.17.2009 – 01.30.2010

Opening: 12.17.2009, 6-8pm

Higher Pictures is proud to announce our second solo exhibition by Barbara Crane. The exhibition will consist entirely of vintage photographs from Crane’s innovative 1969 – 1978 Repeats series. In Repeats, which are conceptualized at the point of picture taking, Crane combines groups of images of related kinds, right side up, upside down, sideways, and in pairs and sequences often resulting in a horizontal DNA like form. Repeats, which look to the contemporary viewer like computerized cut and paste strips of images (but obviously are not), cover a range of subject matter such as tar spatters on a sidewalk, trucks on a highway, clothes on a line, a snowcapped mountain range and a row of aluminum rowboats. The resulting experimental photographs blur the line between abstraction and representation and necessitate a slow viewing with close scrutiny.

Barbara Crane is well known as one of Chicago’s most experimental and prolific photographers who Victor M. Cassidy calls the “spiritual grandchild of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy”. Born in Chicago in 1928, Crane studied at Mills College, CA, and New York University before returning to Chicago to complete the graduate degree at the Institute of Design in 1966. From 1967 to 1995 Crane taught photography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she remains a professor emeritus. Barbara Crane has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships (1974, 1988), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Photography (2001) and the first Ruth Horwich Award to a Famous Chicago Artist (2009). She has exhibited internationally and her photographs are found in many major museums ranging from Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D.C. to Paris and Kyoto. She has published numerous books, most recent are Private Views (Aperture 2009) and Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision (Chicago Cultural Center 2009).

Currently on view at the Chicago Cultural Center ‘Barbara Crane: Challenging Vision’ a 60-year retrospective exhibition, guest curated by Kenneth C. Burkhart, celebrates the long and brilliant career of Chicago photographer Barbara Crane, who turned 81 years old this year. The exhibition constitutes the largest gathering of Crane’s work to date, including over 300 photographs from many separate series in both color and black and white.

For further information please contact Kim Bourus at (212) 249-6100.