John Chiara is a landscape photographer whose art is grounded in the physical process of the medium. “The subject of my work is photography itself,” says Chiara. “...(and) its manifestation through its means.” Chiara often chooses deliberately nondescript places to photograph, in urban, rural or semi-rural places, seeking what he calls “in-between spaces...the type of places you would normally walk past without paying much attention”.

Chiara’s giant cameras are transported to locations on a flatbed trailer and allow the artist to simultaneously shoot and perform his darkroom work while images are recorded directly onto oversized photosensitive paper. Designed and built by the artist, the camera’s very large size and 18th century technology force part of his process beyond his control: through the barrel lens, images are projected directly onto the scroll of photographic paper fixed inside the camera ‘chamber’ and, during exposure, Chiara manually burns, dodges and filters the light entering through the lens, working to change the temperature of light and spectrum of color as if in the darkroom. Every John Chiara photograph is unique.

During an artist residency at the Budapest Art Factory, Chiara photographed the Angyalföld neighborhood, whose name translates as ‘the dust of angels'. Working with negative photographic paper, he captured the urban juxtaposition of different architectural periods punctuated with advertising billboards, trees and electrical cables.

Graduate in Photography (2004) from the California College of the Arts, in 2015 John Chiara featured in the landmark exhibition Light, Paper, Process, Reinventing Photography, at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Today his works are in major collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; and the Harry Ransom Center, Texas.