The Long-Running Red Chair Art Project Came to Hyattsville

Photo courtesy of The Red Chair project

The photographer behind a long-running cross-country art project featuring a red chair posted a photograph taken in Hyattsville over the Memorial Day weekend.

Photographer Chris Rief began The Red Chair project in 1999 while a student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“The Red Chair is a ladder back style chair that was purchased from a roadway shop north of Raleigh in spring of 1999,” Rief explains on the project’s Facebook page. “The chair was in its natural brown form until it was painted in a cherry like red.”

Like an artsier version of Flat Stanley, the project involves taking hundreds of photos of the Red Chair in various places around the country, usually without people present. Rief, a professional photographer who works with nonprofits, often places it in front of colorful murals or historic buildings.

So it was only natural that when the Red Chair made it to Hyattsville, Rief would photograph it in front of the rainbow mural in the Arts District, made as part of the Fight the Blight initiative. (He also made a gif using the colors of the rainbow.)

The Red Chair has been photographed in Raleigh, Nashville, Philadelphia, Detroit, and, more recently around the D.C. area, where Rief now lives.

Coincidentally, it’s not the only Red Chair project. Another photographer began a similar project involving more touristy locations after being inspired by a picture of a red chair at an inn on Cape Cod.

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