Barbara Crane - English version

Exposure : Photo Gallery – Centre Pompidou, Paris September 10-December 31, 2024 Internationally renowned American photographer Barbara Crane (1928-2019) developed a plural body of work that spans more than sixty years. Deeply influenced by conceptual art, Crane is fascinated by the potentialities of repetition and deconstruction of visual information. Its images explore all the possibilities offered by the techniques of the medium photographic: platinum-palladium prints, gelatin silver prints and digital, instant prints (Polaroid), photographic transfers... are organized into sequences, grids or slideshows. Trained by Aaron Siskind – master of photographic abstract expressionism – at the Institute of Design in Chicago in the 1960s, she discovered the work of László very early on Moholy-Nagy and his formal rigor. Crane's images operate a synthesis between the tradition of American straight photography and a more experimental, inherited from the European avant-gardes, typical of the teachings of the Chicago School. Crane thus combines a total freedom towards the medium with a technical perfectionism that sets her apart from her contemporaries. Her approach photographic of the city, Chicago in the first place, and its inhabitants anonymous becomes particularly singular. His curiosity and his taste for experimentation has guided his long career. Produced in partnership with the Barbara Crane Estate (in Chicago), the exhibition presented at the Centre Pompidou will be the first monographic exhibition major exhibition dedicated to this artist in Europe. It will bring together more than 200 photographs, some of which recently entered the collections of the museum. Focusing on the first twenty-five years of his career, the exhibition will bring together some of his major works, including several previously unpublished works. The book which accompanies it will place Crane's production in the artistic context of his time and in the history of the medium, through two interviews, carried out with the artist in the last years of his life, and essays echoing with a selection of iconic and previously unpublished works. Designed in the same exploratory approach as Crane, this book will unfold the universe of a major photographer.