photography in all its forms

New York, New York

In Conversation: Barbara Crane and Barbara Hitchcock
Talk and Book Signing

Wednesday, November 11, 2009
6:30 pm

FREE

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Exhibition on View:
Saturday, November 7–Thursday, January 7, 2010

Join photographer Barbara Crane for a book signing and conversation with author Barbara Hitchcock on the occasion of the Aperture Gallery exhibition, Barbara Crane: Private Views. In the early 1980s, Crane embarked on a photographic project on Chicago's various summer festivals. Armed with a Super Speed Graphic camera and Polaroid film, Crane waded in close to the revelers and focused on capturing details of clothing and hairstyles, but most importantly, gesture. The images are tightly cropped and terrifically alive, viscerally bringing us into the crush of people eating, drinking, and enjoying the crowd dynamic—an incredible inventory of private gestures performed in public spaces.

Barbara Crane (born in Chicago, 1928) is a celebrated American photographer known for her extraordinary commitment to experimentation and innovation. The common thread in her work, which ranges from abstract to documentary, is the human form and the urban landscape. Crane studied art history at Mills College, completing her BA at New York University in 1950. She returned to Chicago and enrolled in the Institute of Design's graduate photography program, studying with Aaron Siskind, among others. Her work has been the subject of six retrospective surveys and more than seventy-six one-person exhibitions. Crane is professor emeritus of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; Higher Pictures, New York; and Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris.