Photograph by Philippe De Jonckheere, Berlin, 1988, silver gelatin print, 8X10 inches.
Barbara Crane, the teacher.
By Philippe De Jonckheere
As I composed the pages of
the future Barbara Crane's future website, a lot of memories of those
times collected in the three years that I have spent in Chicago are flooding
back to me. I remember the first time I met Barbara Crane. My friend Halley
Smith, the unspeakable american student in the photo department of my
parisian art school, had told me that I had to do everything possible
to get into one of Barbara Crane's classes. So once in Chicago, before
I even started to look for a steady place to stay, the first thing first
was to go to Barbara Crane and asked her if she could accept me in one
of her classes, well she refused, all of her classes were full and she
could not take anyone. I insisted, she became quite cross with me, my
very poor english of the time did nothing to help — at the time, when
people would tell me see you later, I would sit on the nearest
bench waiting for them to come back in a few minutes maximum, I did wait
— fellow students would have a grand time at my expense teaching me that
a lens was an easel, a beeker a ruler and a ruler was a lens. Barbara
Crane's look became darker and darker, there was no use in telling her
that I had comed all the way from France to take a class with her, she
just would not have it. The next day I pushed my luck even further and
asked her if she could look at my portfolio. She gave me a fierce look
(and believe me, Barbara Crane is not someone you want to be on the wrong
side of). She must have thought I was some salesman or something, that
until she hadn't quickly looked at the goods, I would come back and push
my way through to her through the windows if the door had been shut and
through the chimney when the windows had been shut as well. So I laid
my portfiolio ( images
of Berlin if I remember well ) on the table, she sat across
the table in this very telling fashion that it is obvious that you are
going to be dismissed in the very next minute. Barbara Crane looked at
the first image and didn't say a word, I couldn't know wether I was expected
to display the next images or, on the contrary, pace down somewhat. The
second image didn't bring forth any comment either and on the third image,
she dashed from the edge of her seat and pointed at a glare that was in
fact the result of an uncontrolled reflection from the strobe, stating
that, yes, this was what made the image "work". I don't
think I understood what she meant but I wasn't about to argue. I kept
on flipping the images, and then the remarks came in a steadier flow,
that became of stunning abundance. I must say that her remarkes were systematically
aimed at details of the images which I had always considered quite secondary,
for Barbara Crane it seems that those details were what the images were
about, the rest of the image ( what I thought was their subject matter
), well that might not have been there as far as Barbara Crane was concerned.
Again I didn't feel brave and able enough in the english language to argue,
I was in fact way too concerned not to stop her in her tracks and not
to be a nuisance of any sort. I thought that she had no time for me, and
there she was, now, seated focused like a spring, in this fashion that
I would be able later to tell that this was her own, all eyes wide opened,
alert mind, sharp as a razor blade, ready to be surprised by anything
and for that matter I will later learn that there is no hierarchy in her
mind, anything can catch her attention and the chances of a stone,
a
fride magnet, a
tree bark, a
shadow on a building facade, all theses things stand equal
chances to catch Barbara's attention.
An hour went by ( it's true, Barbara Crane has NO sense of time, when
her attention is drawn, time stops and it becomes impossible to explain
to her that pressing deadlines, such as a train or a plane to catch are
looming). She was now talking and commenting, I was doing my best to catch
some of it — I felt like I was trying to pour lake Michigan using a canstrainer,
despite my inadequate tool, I managed to catch some of it. We were looking
at the 20th image of the lot ( there was another ten to go ), and she
suddenly realises, lightning strikes, that she has to go. I gathered all
my might, and asked her if really it would not be at all possible that
she would accept me in one of her classes, as she was grabbing her bag,
she said no... she'd-see-me-every-wenesday-at-2PM-is-that-all-right-with-me?
I don't think I have ever learned as many things
during those one to one weekly meetings, cooking that we were, the two
of us, in that crammed and jammed little office in which it was unthinkable
to unfold an image larger than 8X10 inches Those meetings would invariably
end up with all the images that I had brought, spread on the floor of
the small office. Barbara would endlessly search through mountains of
contact sheets ( I think that what Barbara enjoyed the most in being my
teacher was that I was shooting a lot of images so she had a lot to play
with) in order to find THE picture that she would consider missing in
a collage of four.
I would love to come back to those times, when Barbara told me one day, as I was coming out of the hospital after a nasty african hepatatis that being ill had done me a lot of good (sic) as it had given me more freedom in my image composition.
You can only imagine now the
pleasure I take to be the one playing with Barbara's images, linking them
to each other in what will be this website.
