John Chiara’s pictures of California are explorations of place and memory born of his deep familiarity with its landscapes and cities combined with an approach to photography rooted in the materiality of the medium. Chiara draws out the surreal and otherworldly qualities of this San Francisco high-rise in this large-scale photograph that he printed as a negative. His attention to the forms of the built environment and his choice of photographic technique offer a boldly assertive view of a normally mundane subject. Chiara’s embrace of the noise and visual artifacts of the photographic process emphasize the physicality of his work.