Carl Chiarenza’s images, though nominally two-dimensional, suggest other things, sometimes beings but more often scapes — deep, complex, convoluted spaces through which the viewer’s eye seeks to wander, drawn almost irresistibly into the intricate folds of this purely illusory terrain. […]
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I believe that an increasingly sophisticated audience will begin searching out and paying respect to those collections whose coherent structures organize the medium’s imagery in diverse and meaningful ways. […] Photography collecting as a field is still at such an early stage in its development that in the late ’70s connoisseurship alone was deemed worthy of extensive media attention and considerable corporate/governmental patronage. Wagstaff’s cunning in getting sponsors to cover the promotional costs of a marketing enterprise clearly contrived to net him a small fortune raised no eyebrows I’m aware of, save my own. […] Take them for what they are: images of the South by people who live there. Some of these photographers are in transition, but then so is the South itself. Some of them will leave, and their work will be molded by other places. But some of them will stay, to put down roots here, to nourish, and be nourished by, whatever the South becomes. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |