Welcome to the latest installment of Haines Gallery's
Artist Digest
.
With each edition, we focus on the work of a single artist, inviting you to explore their practice in depth through a carefully curated mix of content.
Today's Digest spotlights the groundbreaking photography of
Chris McCaw
, whose work disrupts the idea that a photograph is simply a representation of reality—instead becoming a physical embodiment of the Earth’s movement and the passage of time.
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While respectfully referencing the history of the medium, Chris McCaw uses formal and technical innovation to push photography in new directions. In his iconic
Sunburn
series, the lenses within his hand-built cameras become magnifying glasses, burning the sun’s path across paper negatives. Throughout his work, the horizon line maps our celestial movements, connecting the viewer to the larger cycles of astronomical time and planetary motion. McCaw’s work has been exhibited and collected by many important institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Chrysler Art Museum, Norfolk, VA; National Gallery of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. McCaw received the Emerging Icon in Photography award from the George Eastman House.
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"It's like I'm connecting in some way with the history of photography."
On location with the Getty Museum, Chris McCaw demonstrates how his large-format cameras mark the sun’s path across the sky.
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"You aren't just documenting the sun, but wind, clouds, and tidal flows."
In this interview with the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, McCaw describes the accidental discovery that led to his
Sunburn
series of works.
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Chris McCaw
Sunburned GSP #899 (Mojave Full Day),
2016
6 Gelatin silver paper negatives
Paper, each: 41 x 12 inches | Overall: 41 x 72 inches
Unique
HG13489
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Chris McCaw
Heliograph #124
, 2016
Gelatin silver paper negative
Paper: 4 x 5 inches
Unique
HG13726
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Chris McCaw
Heliograph #132 (Double Day)
, 2017
5 Gelatin silver paper negatives
Paper, each: 10 x 8 inches | Overall: 10 x 40 inches
Unique
HG13791
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Chris McCaw
Sunburned GSP #928 (Pacific Ocean)
, 2016
Gelatin silver paper negative
Paper: 20 x 12 inches | Frame: 25 x 17 inches
Unique
HG14190
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Chris McCaw
Sunburned GSP #818 (San Francisco Bay)
, 2014
Gelatin silver paper negative
Paper: 4 x 5 inches | Frame: 9 x 11 inches
Unique
HG14189
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Chris McCaw
Sunburned GSP #944 (Pacific Ocean, sunset in 9 frames), 2016
9 Gelatin silver paper negatives
Framed, overall: 17 x 136 inches
Unique
HG13878
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Installation view of
Chris McCaw: Time and Tides, March 2 - April 29, 2017 at Haines Gallery
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"Artist Profile: Chris McCaw
"
by Dave Roth
"As for the movement of the sun, astronomy unveiled most of the pertinent facts long before photography was invented; yet I know of no photographs that track the sun’s movement in the manner of McCaw’s."
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Books
Predicting the Past:
Zohar Studio, The Lost Years
By Stephen Berkman
"My friend Stephen Berkman's amazing project
Predicting the Past: Zohar Studios, The Lost Years
was 20 years in the making—and his solp exhibition at the Contemporary Jewish Museum was its first unveiling. The show was shut down on opening day, but I was able to see it just an hour before the museum closed. The exhibition is available
virtually online
, although a virtual tour isn’t like the real thing.
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Movies
"In order to remember what day it is, every Sunday has become homemade pizza night, along with a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film. There are some really creative and strange scenes in these films. I am constantly amazed that some of the dance scenes are done perfectly in one take, and it's amazing how many classic songs came out of those films."
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Works from Chris McCaw's
Family Farm
series, platinum palladium prints, 1997-2002.
Collection of the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
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Chris McCaw's early platinum prints depict his family's farm in California's Central Valley: "It is my intention for this project to stand as a document of my family's history, and a way of life that is ending in California."
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Chris McCaw,
Instant #25, 2020
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Ansel Adams in Our Time
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Bentonville, AR
September 19, 2020 - January 3, 2021
Chris McCaw is included in
Ansel Adams in Our Time
, a group exhibition that pairs works by over 20 contemporary photographers with
Ansel Adams' iconic images of the American West, exploring how these modern-day images of the wilderness and environmental concerns point directly to Adams’ legacy.
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Triptych Series: Chris McCaw, Meghann Riepenhoff and Matthew Brandt
Yoffy Press
Forthcoming, Fall 2020
A new publication by Yoffy Press features images from Chris McCaw's
Instant
series (pictured, above), which utilize the powerful lenses of his hand-built cameras to create marks on Fuji peel-apart film. Many of McCaw's newest works were created in the first lockdown, from his driveway during the first months of the pandemic.
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Image + Object
New Museum Los Gatos
Los Gatos, CA
July 10 - November, 29, 2020
Take a
Virtual Tour
of
Image + Object
, a group exhibition of works by McCaw, Meghann Riepenhoff, Moira McDonald, and Klea McKenna, who employ analog processes—with and without cameras—that embrace early photographic history while furthering our understanding of the medium.
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"It's fun to be in a space in photography where no one's been there before. Analog photography isn't dead — there are places to go where we've never been."
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