Monday, January 28, 2008

John Chiara: Land's End Photo Show at Von Lintel gallery



I managed to make it back to Chelsea for a gallery walk this past Saturday and ran into a plethora of wonderful shows. The show that stood out significantly this time, striking that fine art photography chord of my heart, was John Chiara's Land's End show at Von Lintel Gallery. He's produced some fantastic images with a refreshingly new process and perspective. I'm a fine art photographer, so I value process and passion more so than that "perfect print" (I'll leave that to anal retentive commercial photographers-not that there is anything wrong with it). John Chiara's process and final product brought much inspiration to my creative table...

"Chiara takes stunning landscape photographs that involve much more than what is in front of the camera. They are, in essence, images of photography itself. Chiara operates a hand-built, room sized camera that is mounted on a flatbed trailer. He works inside of the camera, physically becoming part of the process. During the long exposures, he dodges and burns by passing his hands in front of the camera's lens. The one-of-a-kind, positive images are then developed utilizing an adapted sewer pipe that he fills iwth photo chemicals."-Von Lintel Gallery release.

The scale of Chiara's pieces is magnificent... 50x60 inches yet retains a very intimate, personal quality. I had the opportunity to speak to the artist himself as he was in the gallery while I was there and hearing his process was truly inspiring. Go see his show...and hopefully you'll have the opportunity to speak to him, as well.

visit the Von Lintel Gallery @ 555 West 25th St, NY, NY 10001. His show will be up until March 1, 2008.
www.vonlintel.com

To watch a video about his process and work, visit

http://www.lightdark.com/


Enjoy!

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