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. ISBN 978-0-9845739-2-9.
Publications with others
- Virginia Heckert. Light, Paper, Process. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2014. ISBN 9781606064375. 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
McCraw'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[6]
- 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[10]
- 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
References
- ↑ "Chris McCaw: Sunburn". SFO Museum. 2013. Retrieved August 18, 2021.
- ↑ "DIY Camera: Chris McCaw's Large-Format Cameras". PDN Online. February 13, 2012. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- ↑ Johnson, Ken (December 27, 2012). "Chris McCaw: 'Marking Time'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris Mc Caw". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- ↑ "Grandpa's almond orchard, Manteca, CA". collections.eastman.org. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- 1 2 "Cirkut #7 (Galbraith Lake, Alaska, within the Arctic Circle, 31 hours)". chrysler.emuseum.com. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Poly-optic #22 (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw. Time and Tides". Wall Street International. April 5, 2017. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Art review: Astonishing photographs track the sun's scorching path". Los Angeles Times. October 22, 2012. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- 1 2 "Met Collection Record McCaw, Chris". www.metmuseum.org. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- ↑ "The Getty Museum". Getty Museum. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ↑ "Art Collection | CollectionSpace". webapps.cspace.berkeley.edu. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ↑ Columbus museum of art online catalog. https://www.columbusmuseum.org/embark-collection/pages/Obj39940/?sid=137765&x=10055615
- ↑ "The Crocker Art Museum announces Brought to Light. Masterworks of Photography from the Crocker Art Museum | Museum Publicity". Museum Publicity. Archived from the original on July 9, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ↑ "DAC Collection Search - Sunburned GSP#447 (Mojave)". dac-collection.wesleyan.edu. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ "Works | Chris McCaw | People | George Eastman Museum". collections.eastman.org. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ↑ "Photography Collections Database". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw (American, born 1971) (Getty Museum)". The J. Paul Getty in Los Angeles. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw | LACMA Collections". collections.lacma.org. Retrieved July 6, 2021.
- ↑ "Montery Museum of Art - Chris McCaw". montereyart.org. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, collection records". Archived from the original on August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Artist Info". www.nga.gov. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Works – Chris McCaw – Artists/Makers – The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art". art.nelson-atkins.org. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Artist: Chris McCaw". North Carolina Museum of Art. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Sunburned GSP #140 (San Francisco Bay)". philamuseum.org. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Sunburned GSP #110 (Mojave)". philamuseum.org. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw". www.portlandartmuseum.us. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Sunburned GSP #141 (San Francisco Bay) (2008-50)". artmuseum.princeton.edu. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Results – Search Objects – Collections at SBMA | Santa Barbara Museum of Art". collections.sbma.net. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw | Smithsonian American Art Museum". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Collections | Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art". jsmacollection.uoregon.edu. Retrieved August 19, 2021.
- ↑ Museum, Victoria and Albert. "Sunburned, GSP #084 (Pacific Ocean) | McCaw, Chris | V&A Explore The Collections". Victoria and Albert Museum: Explore the Collections. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
- ↑ "Chris McCaw | Sunburned GSP#499 (San Francisco Bay)". whitney.org. Retrieved August 17, 2021.
