John Chiara
Subtitle: California
By: essay by Virginia Heckert ; photographs and statement by John Chiara
Contributors: Heckert, Virginia, contributor
Edition: First edition, 2017.
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 164
ISBN-13: 9781597114233
Subjects: Catalogs; Landscape photography; Artistic Photography; Pictorial works; Architectural photography
Other titles: California
Description: John Chiara creates his own cameras and chemical processes in order to make unique photographs using the direct exposure of light onto reversal film and paper. Chiara describes his process: "When I'm out shooting, I directly expose the paper, dodge, burn, and filter the light as if I were working in the darkroom. Focusing almost exclusively on landscapes and architecture, each resulting photograph is a singular, luminous object that renders each scene with an almost hallucinatory clarity, deploying surreal shifts of color, light, and skewed perspectives. This book, his first, focuses exclusively on images of Chiara's native California, including images from his hometown of San Francisco and other locations in Northern California, as well as Los Angeles and along the Pacific Coast. Virginia Heckert's essay situates Chiara's work in the long tradition of the landscape of the American West while also discussing his working methods and the contemporary context of this process-driven work.