In conversation is an inspired pairing of John Chiara’s dreamy, richly colored camera obscura photographs with Angela West’s painterly mixed media works. Both West and Chiara play with reflection, light and abstraction to create deeply evocative landscapes that are less about depiction of place but rather the memory of it. West and Chiara each embody a contemporary sensibility that addresses memory, identity, and the evolving relationship between people and nature.

Angela West (born 1971, Dahlonega, GA) creates series of varied photographic projects relating to her hometown and the chronology of its inhabitants. Employing the traditional academic genres of art to explore the nature and place of community, Angela West’s series include portrait studies of small-town teenage girls, landscape explorations of neighborhoods, and still life’s that represent the passing of time. In each genre, her richly realized color photographs balance affection for her subjects with precise and unsentimental observation. Angela West's photography has been exhibited at the Pinchuk Art Centre, Kieve, Ukraine, the Modern 07, Munich, Germany, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia. Her work is included in the collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, The Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C. and the Sir Elton John Collection. She was the recipient of a 2009 Artadia Award. West received a BFA from University of Georgia in 1995, and an MFA from Yale University in 2000 where she was the recipient of the George Sakier Memorial Award for Excellence in Photography. She lives and works in Atlanta, GA.

John Chiara (born 1971, San Francisco) has developed a process that is part photography, part sculpture, and part event. It is an undertaking requiring invention in his tools, and patience in using them. He creates one-of-a-kind photographs in a variety of hand-built cameras, the largest of which is a 50 x 80-inch field camera that he transports on a flatbed trailer. Once he selects a location, he situates, and then physically enters, the camera, and maneuvers in near total darkness a sheet of positive color photographic paper onto the camera's back wall. Throughout each exposure, his instinctive control limits the light entering the lens. He uses his hands to burn and dodge the large-scale images and develops them in a spinning drum by agitating the chemistry over photographic paper lining the interior of the drum. Chiara’s photographs are perceptive eliciting a visceral response, yet they are rendered in soft hues that exude a strong sense of the viscosity of material and the ephemerality of presence. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from the University of Utah in 1995, and his M.F.A. in Photography from the California College of the Arts in 2004. Chiara’s work is included in numerous institutional including the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, CA; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, among others. The artist currently divides his time between San Francisco and New York City.