Barbara Crane (March 19, 1928 – August 7, 2019) was an American artist photographer born in Chicago, Illinois.
She was known for her experimental and innovative work that challenges the straight photograph by incorporating sequencing, layered negatives, and repeated frames.
Naomi Rosenblum notes that Crane "pioneered the use of repetition to convey the mechanical character of much of contemporary life, even in its recreational aspects.
In 2013, Barbara Crane was named artist honoree at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Illinois.
Eighteen months after graduating from ID, she secured a position to teach photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago which she held from 1967 (becoming a full professor in 1978) through 1995.
[5] During Crane's Guggenheim Fellowship (1979), she collaborated with the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona to create a career retrospective of her work.