Crane, Barbara. Barbara Crane: Evolution of a Vision. Signed.

Essay by Tom Beck. Memorandum on Alchemy by Paul Vanderbilt. Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1983. Exhibition catalog, illustrated wraps, 20 pages. Includes list of 269 works in the exhibit. Summary:

Barbara Crane: The Evolution of a Vision, published in 1983 by the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery (University of Maryland, Baltimore County), is an exhibition monograph documenting the first twenty-five years of experimental fine art photographer Barbara Crane's career.

Key Summary & Highlights

• Exhibition Record: Created to accompany a major mid-career survey, the monograph features critical essays by curator Tom Beck and photo-historian Paul Vanderbilt ("Memorandum on Alchemy"), alongside a comprehensive chronology and an exhibition checklist citing nearly 270 works.

• Formalist and Avant-Garde Exploration: The volume highlights Crane’s dynamic synthesis of documentary realism and radical formal abstraction, tracing her roots in the Chicago School of photography.

• Seriality and Sequence: A primary focus of the work is Crane's innovative use of visual repetition, including multi-frame grids, film strip sequences, modular wall installations, and layered double exposures.

• Technological Versatility: The plates—spanning both black-and-white and color photography—demonstrate her fluid experimentation with various formats and mediums, including large-view cameras, 35mm wide-angle street shots, Polaroid materials, and alternative printing processes like platinum and palladium.

Barbara Crane (1928–2019)

Barbara Crane was an influential American photographer and educator renowned for her relentless experimentation, formal rigor, and inventive approach to the photographic medium. Born in Chicago, she studied art history at New York University before earning her Master of Science in photography at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1966 under the mentorship of Aaron Siskind. Over a prolific career spanning six decades, Crane challenged the conventions of straight photography by exploring repetition, grid structures, abstract human forms, overlapping exposures, and environmental portraiture. A dedicated instructor, she served on the faculty of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly thirty years (1967–1995). Honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and multiple National Endowment for the Arts grants, Crane's extensive body of work remains widely celebrated and held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Centre Pompidou.

Copies available including one signed:

• Near fine with yellow round label on title page with a number. 
• Very good with crimp on lower right of front cover, warmly inscribed and SIGNED by Barbara to David (possibly David Travis), June 28, 1983.