BARBARA CRANE: STICKS AND STONES
Number three displays a long branch stretching horizontally across four images. There’s some repetition–a kind of overlap effect; the area just to the left of each frame line is printed again just to its right. Aside from jarring the eye, this repetition reminds the viewer of the artificiality of photography and the arbitrariness of framing: instead of the continuity of nature, we experience the repetition made possible by photo reproduction.
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Crane, a 66-year-old Chicago native, was first exposed to photography by her father, who printed pictures of family and friends in his amateur darkroom; she recalls watching in fascination as the images emerged from blank paper in the developing tray. As an undergraduate at Mills College she was encouraged by the great photographer Imogen Cunningham–“She gave us such hope; she gave me the sense that one could survive”–and Crane began taking her own photos to document artwork by others while she was still an art history major. Sixteen years later, in 1964, Aaron Siskind viewed her personal photographs and encouraged her to enroll in IIT’s Institute of Design, after which her work increased in complexity and gained wider recognition.
