Chris McCaw explained

Chris McCaw (born 1971) is an American photographer whose work is held in many public collections.

Life and photography

McCaw was born in Daly City, California, in 1971. He has a BFA from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.^[1]

McCaw is known for his large-format homemade cameras^[2] in which he uses expired gelatin silver photo paper and long exposures to make solarized paper negatives which often include the burned path of the sun within the frame, in a series named Sunburn.^[3] McCaw travels to remote places to capture different apparent movements of the sun, including the Arctic Circle in Alaska, the Galápagos Islands and the Mojave Desert.^[4] McCaw's earlier work used a 7×17 inch view camera to create large-format negatives from which he made platinum prints.^[5] Projects following Sunburn include work with a modified Cirkut camera, resulting in exposures that can take more than 24 hours.^[6] A series titled Poli-optic employs a homemade camera with a grid of lenses.^[7] Finally, the series Heliograph includes work in which there are multiple exposures of the sun on the same paper negative.^[8]

Sunburn

McCaw's best known project is titled Sunburn.^[9] The Metropolitan Museum of Art writes about the series that:

In 2003 McCaw, a photographer based in San Francisco, began taking pictures of the sun. Using large-format cameras that he builds himself, McCaw works outdoors, usually in the desert or by the sea. Instead of film, he places photographic paper in the camera so that each picture he creates is a unique paper negative. His exposures often last four hours or more. McCaw calls these works "Sunburns" because the rays of the sun, magnified by the camera's lens, actually scorch the paper negative, sometimes burning all the way through the paper base. The intensity of the light also causes solarization, reversing the tonal values so that the negative print appears as a positive image.^[10]

Publications

Publications by McCaw

• Sunburn. Richmond, VA: Candela, 2012. .

Publications with others

• Virginia Heckert. Light, Paper, Process. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2014. . Includes work by Alison Rossiter, Marco Breuer, James Welling, Lisa Oppenheim, McCaw, John Chiara, and Matthew Brandt who "push light-sensitive photographic papers and chemical processing beyond their limits."^[11]

Collections

McCaw's work is held in the following permanent collections:

• Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA^[12]
• Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH^[13]
• Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA^[14] Museum Publicity
• Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA
• Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT^[15]
• George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, Rochester, NY^[16]
• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX^[17]
• J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA^[18]
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA^[19]
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, CA^[20]
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX^[21]
• National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC^[22]
• Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO^[23]
• North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC^[24]
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA^{[25] [26]}
• Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR^[27]
• Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ^[28]
• Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA^[29]
• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC^[30]
• University of Oregon, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR^[31]
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England^[32]
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY^[33]

See also

• Hiroshi Yamazaki

References

1. Web site: 2013. Chris McCaw: Sunburn. 2021-08-18. SFO Museum. en.
2. Web site: 2012-02-13. DIY Camera: Chris McCaw’s Large-Format Cameras. 2021-07-06. PDN Online. en.
3. News: Johnson. Ken. 2012-12-27. Chris McCaw: ‘Marking Time’. en-US. The New York Times. 2021-07-05. 0362-4331.
4. Web site: Chris Mc Caw. 2021-07-06. The New Yorker. en.
5. Web site: Grandpa's almond orchard, Manteca, CA. 2021-07-06. collections.eastman.org. en.
6. Web site: Cirkut #7 (Galbraith Lake, Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, 31 hours). 2021-08-17. chrysler.emuseum.com. en.
7. Web site: Poly-optic #22 (Getty Museum). 2021-08-17. The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. en.
8. Web site: 2017-04-05. Chris McCaw. Time and Tides. 2021-08-17. Wall Street International. en.
9. Web site: 2012-10-22. Art review: Astonishing photographs track the sun's scorching path. live. 2021-07-06. Los Angeles Times. en-US. https://web.archive.org/web/20210709184719/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2012-oct-22-la-et-cm-chris-mccaw-review-20121015-story.html . July 9, 2021 .
10. Web site: Met Collection Record McCaw, Chris. live. 2021-07-06. www.metmuseum.org. https://web.archive.org/web/20161107233453/http://www.metmuseum.org:80/art/collection/search/289113 . November 7, 2016 .
11. Web site: The Getty Museum. 2021-07-05. Getty Museum. en.
12. Web site: Art Collection CollectionSpace. 2021-07-05. webapps.cspace.berkeley.edu.
13. Columbus museum of art online catalog. https://www.columbusmuseum.org/embark-collection/pages/Obj39940/?sid=137765&x=10055615
14. Web site: The Crocker Art Museum announces Brought to Light. Masterworks of Photography from the Crocker Art Museum Museum Publicity. live. 2021-07-05. Museum Publicity. en-US. https://web.archive.org/web/20210709183535/https://museumpublicity.com/2012/04/10/the-crocker-art-museum-announces-brought-to-light-masterworks-of-photography-from-the-crocker-art-museum/ . July 9, 2021 .
15. Web site: DAC Collection Search - Sunburned GSP#447 (Mojave). 2021-08-19. dac-collection.wesleyan.edu.
16. Web site: Works Chris McCaw People George Eastman Museum. 2021-07-05. collections.eastman.org.
17. Web site: Photography Collections Database. 2021-07-06. norman.hrc.utexas.edu.
18. Web site: Chris McCaw (American, born 1971) (Getty Museum). 2021-08-17. The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. en.
19. Web site: Chris McCaw LACMA Collections. 2021-07-06. collections.lacma.org.
20. Web site: Montery Museum of Art - Chris McCaw. 2021-08-17. montereyart.org.
21. Web site: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, collection records. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20210817185704/https://emuseum.mfah.org/objects/101002/reflective-road-manteca-ca?ctx=0bbc18290e1fefb017e1a296102121c5c3ccb968&idx=0 . August 17, 2021 .
22. Web site: Artist Info. 2021-08-17. www.nga.gov.
23. Web site: Works – Chris McCaw – Artists/Makers – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. 2021-08-17. art.nelson-atkins.org.
24. Web site: Artist: Chris McCaw. 2021-08-17. North Carolina Museum of Art. en-US.
25. Web site: Sunburned GSP #140 (San Francisco Bay). 2021-08-17. philamuseum.org. en.
26. Web site: Sunburned GSP #110 (Mojave). 2021-08-17. philamuseum.org. en.
27. Web site: Chris McCaw. 2021-08-17. www.portlandartmuseum.us.
28. Web site: Sunburned GSP #141 (San Francisco Bay) (2008-50). 2021-08-17. artmuseum.princeton.edu. en.
29. Web site: Results – Search Objects – Collections at SBMA Santa Barbara Museum of Art. 2021-08-17. collections.sbma.net.
30. Web site: Chris McCaw Smithsonian American Art Museum. 2021-08-17. americanart.si.edu. en-US.
31. Web site: Collections Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. 2021-08-19. jsmacollection.uoregon.edu.
32. Web site: Museum. Victoria and Albert. Sunburned, GSP #084 (Pacific Ocean) McCaw, Chris V&A Explore The Collections. 2021-08-17. Victoria and Albert Museum: Explore the Collections. en.
33. Web site: Chris McCaw Sunburned GSP#499 (San Francisco Bay). 2021-08-17. whitney.org. en.