George Eastman Museum

Carl Chiarenza was a member of the second class to graduate from the newly-established bachelor of fine arts program in photography at Rochester Institute of Technology. His classmates included well-known photographers Bruce Davidson, Kenneth Josephson, Pete Turner, and Jerry Uelsmann. In an interview with LensWork magazine editor Brooks Jensen from 2000, Chiarenza discusses the dual influences of Minor White and Ralph Hattersley, two prominent faculty members at RIT during the mid 1950s: Now in the photo thing, as this program is developing, Hattersley was the person—of the teachers we had Hattersley was the person who was directly involved with putting the program together. Minor came into the program when he moved to Rochester and Eastman House, so he came in part-time. Anyway, as the classes got going over the two-year period, we would be bouncing back and forth between Minor and Ralph. So the wonderful thing about this was that we didn't get stuck with a single track. We were not under Minor White, we w