John Chiara received a BFA in photography from the University of Utah in 1995 and an MFA in photography from the California College of the Arts in 2004. Chiara was Artist in Residence at Budapest Art Factory (2017); Crown Point Press, San Francisco (2006, 2016); Porch Society, Clarksdale, Mississippi (2013–14); Gallery Four, Baltimore (2010); and Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California (2010). In 2011 and 2013, the Pilara Foundation in San Francisco commissioned work that was included in two group exhibitions at Pier 24 Photography: HERE and A Sense of Place .
Virginia Heckert is photography curator and head of the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; she is the curator of Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography and author of the accompanying catalogue (2015). Her other books include Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments (2013) and Irving Penn: Small Trades (2009), coauthored with Anne Lacoste.