Aperture No. 261 - Winter 2025

The Craft Issue

Aperture’s “The Craft Issue” features photographers who make pictures the slow way—building camera obscuras, creating photograms, and laboring in traditional darkrooms to make handmade, unrepeatable forms.

“It’s a bleak thought, but one that must be confessed, that our own life is something we don’t understand—one that must be addressed, to see an art such as John Chiara makes. Since the age of sixteen, Chiara has maintained a darkroom, a way of developing for himself the images he’s taken, but a process ornate enough that he began to suspect it interfered with the direct experience of vision and memory driving his artistic inquiry.” - Dan Beachy-Quick

Pier 24 - Instagram Takeover - 11 - 15 September 2023

“Hi, my name is John Chiara. I am a San Francisco based photographer. I was born here and have deep love for the Bay Area. I spend most of my time trying to clearly see it from every angle. Currently, I am artist in residence on treasure island through the San Francisco Arts Commission. I am looking forward to sharing from this body of work and others on Instagram.” - John Chiara, 2023

2022

Treasure Island
Photo Documentation Project,
San Francisco Arts Commission

San Francisco, CA

John Chiara’s residency with the San Francisco Arts Commission captures Treasure Island at a pivotal moment, as the former naval base transforms into one of San Francisco’s most ambitious new neighborhoods. Working with his monumental, hand-built cameras, some large enough for him to physically enter, Chiara creates singular, direct-to-paper photographs that merge craft, intuition, and performance. Over months of visiting the island, he recorded the shifting landscape where remnants of its past give way to new housing, parks, and public spaces envisioned by the Treasure Island Development Authority. His images embrace the site’s dramatic contrasts, expansive vistas, industrial traces, rising architecture, and the island’s ever-changing light and fog, offering a deeply personal and tactile record of a place in transition, and a visual testimony to an evolving community taking shape in the Bay.

2020

Fundaziun Nairs
Scuol, Switzerland

During his residency at Fundaziun Nairs in Scuol, Switzerland, John Chiara immersed himself in the dramatic landscapes and distinct cultural rhythms of the Engadin valley, bringing his singular, large-format, camera-based practice into dialogue with the region’s alpine light and terrain. Working with his hand-built cameras and direct-to-paper process, Chiara explored the interplay between natural environment and built heritage, responding to the area’s historic architecture, crystalline atmosphere, and shifting seasonal conditions. His time at Nairs allowed for sustained experimentation and site-responsive image making, resulting in a body of work that reflects both the contemplative pace of the residency and the striking contrasts of the Swiss alpine setting.

2017 & 2019

Budapest Art Factory
Budapest, Hungary

During his residency at Budapest Art Factory, John Chiara brought his experimental, camera-as-sculpture process to the heart of Hungary’s capital, responding to the city’s layered histories and shifting urban landscape. Working with his hand-built large-format cameras and direct-to-paper technique, he created images that engage with Budapest’s industrial edges, evolving architecture, and atmospheric light. The residency offered Chiara the space to explore new visual terrain while maintaining the physical, intuitive approach central to his practice. The resulting photographs reflect a dialogue between the city’s past and present, capturing its textures, contrasts, and sense of transformation through Chiara’s singular, immersive way of seeing.

2006 & 2016

Crown Point Press
San Francisco, CA

John Chiara’s residencies at Crown Point Press in San Francisco in 2006 and again in 2016 brought his inventive photographic vision into the esteemed printmaking studio known for collaborative, artist-driven editions with master printers. At Crown Point, Chiara engaged deeply with the photogravure process, producing a series of ten limited-edition prints that translate his distinctive approach to light, surface, and landscape into richly textured intaglio works on paper. Working within the workshop’s historic tradition of printmaking, where artists explore etching and related techniques alongside skilled printers, Chiara’s projects resulted in striking color and tonal photogravures that extend his analog, tactile aesthetic beyond his singular camera practice and into the realm of fine art prints.