Sheltering Arms II

Over the past decade, John Chiara has produced one-of-a-kind images of San Francisco and the Northern California landscape that are incredibly detailed and unmistakably handmade. Chiara’s inventive techniques leave behind visible traces of his process, resulting in works that invite us to contemplate their content while pointing to the chemical aspects of their creation.

Sheltering Arms II includes lush, lucid images of spaces that are often transitional and bypassed, each imbued an atmospheric, dream-like quality — a reminder of landscape photography’s continued potential, of the joy in meandering, and beauty that can be found in even the most prosaic of surroundings.

Chris McCaw’s experimental photography harnesses the visceral contribution of unpredictable forces — light, weather, and seasons — to create his highly polished images. In his iconic Sunburn series, the high powered lenses of his hand-built cameras allows the sun to literally burn a path across light sensitive photo paper.

Over long exposures lasting several hours or a full day, the sun appears as a scorched, searing arch over the landscape — across deserts and mountain ranges, reflected in the glossy surface of lakes. “You aren't just documenting the sun,” McCaw has said, “but wind, clouds, and tidal flows." The resulting works disrupt the idea of photography as simply a representation of reality, instead becoming an embodiment of the Earth’s constant rotation and the passage of time.