Carl Chiarenza

Carl Chiarenza is a well-Known American photographer, born in 1935, and long based in the Boston area. In 2010, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Photographic Resource Center in Boston. He is also known as the biographer Aaron Siskind. This is the first work by him to come into the museum's collection.

Born in Rochester, New York, Carl Chiarenza earned an A.A.S. and B.F.A. from the Rochester Institute of Technology, an M.S. and A.M. degree from Boston University, and a Ph.D from Harvard University. He was Chair and director of graduate studies at Boston University while also serving at Professor of Art History (1963-1986). He later became the Fanny Knapp Allen Professor at the University of Rochester (1986-1998) and has also taught at Smith College and Cornell University. He has written extensively about photography throughout his career and is particularly known for Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (Little, Brown, Boston, 1982). His photographs have been exhibited in more than 90 solo shows and more than 280 group exhibitions since 1957. His work was the subject of a 2021 retrospective at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester.