Carl Chiarenza collection

Photographer, writer, editor and educator Carl Chiarenza was born in Rochester, New York on September 5, 1935. Chiarenza resides in Rochester, serving as Artist-in-Residence and Fanny Knapp Allen Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Rochester. He earned both an Associate in Applied Science degree in 1955 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1957 from Rochester Institute of Technology, as well as a Master of Science in 1959 and a Master of Art in 1964 from Boston University; he also received a PhD from Harvard University in 1973.

Chiarenza has worked extensively at a vast number of institutions throughout the United States. He worked as a chairman, Director of Graduate Studies, and professor of art history at Boston University from 1963 to 1986, as well as taught at Smith College and Cornell University, among others. From 1986 to 1998, Chiarenza was Fanny Knapp Allen Professor at University of Rochester. His other career endeavors include working as the associate editor and editor of the magazine Contemporary Photography from 1963 to 1969, as a trustee of the Visual Studies Workshop, the director of the Photographic Resource Center, and an officer at the Society for Photographic Education. Chiarenza has served as a member of various committees at the George Eastman House, as a member of the International Advisory Council at the International Center of Photography, and as a chairman for the Photographics Collection of the Harvard University Art Museums Committee on Collections. He was also a cofounder of the Society of Heliographers from 1962 to 1964, and a cofounder of Imageworks from 1971 to 1973.

Carl Chiarenza has published many essays and monographs. Some of his notable publications include Landscapes of the Mind (David R Godine, Boston, 1988), Evocations (Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2002), Solitudes (Lodima Press, Revere, PA, 2005), and the critical biography Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (Little, Brown, Boston, 1982) which won Chiarenza a Photographic Historical Society merit award.

Chiarenza is best known for his contemporary photography which often features abstract objects focusing on light, form, and color. His work has been in over 80 solo exhibitions and 250 group exhibitions since 1957, at institutions including the International Center of Photography, George Eastman House, Museum of Modern Art and National Museum of American Art. Permanent installations of Chiarenza’s work live at the Rochester Institute of Technology and University of Rochester, amid others.

In 1987 Carl Chiarenza gifted the Center of Creative Photography his archival collection which includes papers, 1960-1982, containing published and unpublished manuscripts, correspondence between Chiarenza and Aaron Siskind, taped interviews with Siskind, his friends, colleagues, students and other photographers and artists who knew him, background materials, a bibliography and exhibition list (compiled in conjunction with Stuart Alexander), and Chiarenza`s copy negatives of Siskind photographs -- materials generated by Chiarenza's extensive writing on Aaron Siskind, (circa 1970 - 1982). The bulk of the collection consists of Chiarenza's work on his Ph.D. dissertation, Terrors and Pleasures: The Life and Work of Aaron Siskind, (Harvard University, January 1973), and his book, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors, (New York Graphic Society, 1982). Before coming to the Center for Creative Photography, the material in this collection was housed at the Archives of American Art where it was copied onto microfilm and is currently available for research.

For a complete chronology of Carl Chiarenza, consult Chiarenza: Landscapes of the Mind, (New York Graphic Society 1988).