Chris McCaw
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Chris McCaw is an American photographer known for his large-format, long-exposure sunburn photographs, in which the sun's path literally burns through silver gelatin paper, leaving scorched traces across the image. Working with homemade cameras and expired photographic paper used as film, McCaw captures the sun's trajectory over hours or even days, creating unique, one-of-a-kind works that exist at the intersection of photography, time, and natural phenomena. His Sunburned series has garnered significant critical attention for its meditation on light, time, and the physicality of the photographic process.
Artists in conversation
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Sugimoto similarly uses extreme long exposure photography to collapse time into a single image, exploring light, duration, and natural phenomena with large format cameras. Both artists treat the photographic process itself as a conceptual subject rather than merely a recording tool.
Adam Fuss
Fuss works directly with photographic paper and light to create cameraless or experimental photographic works that emphasize unique physical traces and natural forces. His process driven approach to silver gelatin materials closely parallels McCaw's investigation of what light can do directly to a photographic surface.
Floris Neusüss
Neusüss was a pioneer of large scale cameraless photography who used photosensitive paper to record the direct imprint of light and objects. His commitment to the photograph as a physical object shaped by elemental forces resonates strongly with McCaw's scorched sun path images.
Artists who inspired them
Minor White
White's deeply meditative and spiritually charged approach to landscape and light photography established a tradition of contemplative American photography that McCaw clearly draws from. His use of the photograph as a vessel for transcendent experience aligns closely with McCaw's interest in capturing cosmic natural phenomena.
Man Ray
Man Ray's rayographs demonstrated that light acting directly on photographic paper could produce compelling and singular works of art without a camera, a foundational concept for McCaw's practice. His willingness to let process and accident drive the final image is a direct precedent for McCaw's sunburned photographs.
Ansel Adams
Adams established the tradition of large format American landscape photography with meticulous attention to light and tonal range in gelatin silver prints. McCaw works directly within and against this tradition, honoring the landscape genre while radically transforming the role of the sun from a light source into a mark making agent.