Budapest
In 2019, John Chiara was artist in residence at the Budapest Art Factory in Hungary, where he spent time photographing Angyalföld , the city neighborhood whose name translates into English as ‘the dust of angels, into French as ‘La poussière des anges’ . Working with negative photographic paper, he created images there that capture the city’s particular urban mix of history and modernity, with residential and industrial architecture of different periods punctuated by advertising billboards, electrical cables but also many trees. In a poetic echo of the district name ‘angel dust’, the city’s bright blue skies become in their negative incarnation a fiery orange-black, creating a nocturnal, dreamlike landscape inhabited by ghostly forms.
The Eye of Photography | November 6, 2021
