Barbara Crane: Chicago Loop

Chicago Loop is the second book in a series on LaSalle Bank’s contemporary photography collection. Photographer Barbara Crane’s working method—a series of contact prints with consistent dimensions, reprinted at actual size—became the model for the book’s design; her insistent frame appears repeatedly and establishes the book’s grid. We dramatized Crane’s small, rather quiet images with black backgrounds and gloss varnish, and reversed the plate section’s foreground/background relationship on the cover.