Urban anomalies: Chicago

Collection of color photographs. Limited Edition of 1500 copies. An elegant production: Oversize-volume format in wide rectangular shape. Pictorial softcovers. Foreword by Michael A. Weinstein. Essay by John B. Rohrbach. Published on the occasion of the exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago from March 21 through June 15, 2002. Presents the photographer's beloved city from a different conceptual perspective that seems miraculously to unfold before one's eyes. "Her compositions stress the tension between the lines of the architecture and her frame. Roofs and fragments of facades seem to float in a contextless space. Conveys the disorienting qualities of urban geography" (The Chicago Reader). Barbara Crane is one of the finest American photographers of our time. Her achievement is much bigger than her reputation: Her impressive body of work deserves - and will reward - a larger mainstream audience than those of many other hyped-up and overrated photographers whose talents, if any, are much smaller than the marketing and merchandising they have received. Late in her long career, the Institute of Design-trained photographer has produced not one but two brilliant books on Chicago (the other being "Chicago Loop") that are clearly influenced by the Bauhaus School's emphasis on formal experimentation, on the intersection and ultimate melding of structures rather than their separateness and solidity. Barbara Crane also uses color both as the seductive formal element that it is as well as a way of expressing her singular "take" on a subject very close to her heart. The results are simply, breathtakingly astonishing, a refreshing antidote to the arid rigidity of the Becher School of urban landscape photography. A splendid achievement. 18 color plates. One of the finest American photographers of the 20th century.