Barbara Blondeau

Barbara Blondeau (1938-1974) born in Detroit, was an artist who constantly challenged the medium of photograph through experimentation, refining and articulating ideas of transparency, repetition, pattern and narrative. Blondeau started her artistic education studying painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago earning her Bachelors of Fine Art in 1961. Blondeau was interoduced to photography her senior year at SAIC, where she took a class taught by Kenneth Josephson. Continuing her studies from the years 1963 to 1966, she went to the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology to study photography, where Moholy Nagy emphasized a systematic exploration of the world of vision. At the Institute of Design, Blondeau studies alongside Aaron Siskind and Joseph Jachna. from 1966 to 1968, she was still working towards her pasters, but taught at St. Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. After receiving her Master’s in 1968, Blondeau moved to Philadelphia to teach at Moore College of Art, and in 1970 she became an assistant professor at the Philadelphia College of the Arts. During her career at the PCA she became the chairman of the department of photography and film. In 1970 Blondeau learned that she had cancer, but after going treatment, her doctors believed that her disease had been cured. Three years later however, it was back spreading quicker than before, and in 1974, unable to move on her own, she entered the hospital passing away less than two months later.