Early Work

Carl Chiarenza was born in Rochester, New York, on September 5th, 1935. He picked up his first camera around the age of eight, and throughout his adolescence, photography and music were his main passions. Here’s Chiarenza recalling a funny story about his early efforts in photography during an interview with his daughter, Gabriella, in 2019: The playground master—in those days we had a person in the playground—had himself an interest in photography, so he encouraged us young people to play with cameras. And some of us would do that, and I did that, and then went home and eventually made a darkroom in the attic where I processed film and made prints. And when I was developing film one day, I had the tank in the sink in the bathroom on the second floor underneath the attic and I was running water to wash the film—and I got the faucet going in such a way that it would go into the tank, move out of the tank in a way that kept it flowing regularly. And I went across the street to make some more negatives in the playground. And when I came back one day I got into real trouble, because the moving water changed its course and overflowed the sink and went down to the first floor—which caused me to have some issues with my father! Source: Gabriella Chiarenza Interview (December 20, 2019)