Duncan Miller Gallery is pleased to announce Chris McCaw: Sunburns, a one-person exhibition featuring new works from the Bay Area artist. The exhibition will be on view from April 10 to May 24.

Chris McCaw is a fine-art photographer who shoots with large-format cameras
(8 x 10, 16 x 20, or 20 x 24 inch), which he builds himself. Sunburns, as the series is titled, are unique images made as McCaw's camera lenses capture and intensify the sun's rays, which often burn a path across the paper.

McCaw explains: "When the conditions are right, the burning goes all the way through the paper base. The subject of the photograph reverses through solarization, and the unique paper negative becomes a one-of-a-kind paper positive . . . not only is the resulting image a representation of the subject photographed, but the subject, the sun, is an active participant in the printmaking . . . both creating and destroying the resulting photograph."

The images-subtle, elegant, and even slightly ominous-invite close scrutiny. The minimalist skylines or horizons, where visible, evoke the transitory nature of the elements in the locales where McCaw chooses to photograph: the desert, the sea, or the mountains.
Chris McCaw was born in the San Francisco Bay area in 1971 and has worked obsessively in the darkroom since the age of thirteen. Although initially self-taught-he spent his teenage years photographing the punk/skateboarding scene-McCaw later received a BFA from the Academy of Art College in 1995. His work has been shown at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Houston Center for Photography; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, New York; SF Camerawork, San Francisco; San Francisco International Airport Museum; and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, among others. His work has been published in many magazines, including Daylight, View Camera, Photo Metro, Raygun, Thrasher, and Maximum Rock 'n' Roll. McCaw was recently the recipient of an Andy Warhol/Southern Exposure grant. His work is in the collections of the George Eastman House; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and many private collections.

Artist Statement
Taking the medium of analog photography to its outer limits.

This new project initially began completely by accident. In 2003 an all-night exposure of the stars made during a camping trip was lost due to the effects of whiskey. Because I was unable to wake up to close the shutter before sunrise, all the information from the night's exposure was destroyed. The intense light of the rising sun was so focused and intense that it physically changed the film, creating a new way for me to think about photography.

In this process the sun burns its path onto the light-sensitive base. As a result of the intense light exposure, the sky reacts in an effect called solarization.

Although the initial burn was made onto film, in 2006 I switched to using gelatin silver black-and-white photographic paper inside the camera. The end result is a unique paper negative: it is scorched by the sun to differing degrees and is reversed into a positive through true solarization. I use various view cameras ranging from a standard 8-by-10-inch size to homemade 16-by-20-inch and 20-by-24-inch view cameras.
Not only is the resulting image a representation of the subject photographed, but part of the subject -the sun-is an active participant in the printmaking. Light, the most basic requirement for creating a photograph, is converted into energy. This energy both creates and destroys the resulting photograph.

Chris McCaw
San Francisco