Chris McCaw - Photographs New York Friday, April 5, 2024 | Phillips
  •  “Not only do I find myself using photographic materials in ways I hadn’t imagined, but I’ve also had to negotiate the physical realities of my subject as I never had to before. Having no control over the placement and movement of the sun, I have had to instead move myself and my equipment to specific locations, at specific times of the year, in order to capture the compositions I wanted.”
    —Chris McCaw

    Chris McCaw’s practice is fundamentally concerned with the collaborative role of the sun in relation to photographic image making. Employing a large-format camera and a lens typically used for military surveillance, McCaw exposes expired darkroom paper – rather than film – for an extended period of time. These long exposures result in unique, scorched, and solarized paper negatives. Fittingly, McCaw’s title for this series is Sunburned.

     

    Informed by a contemporary perspective, McCaw’s photographs recall the medium’s earliest beginnings, specifically Niepce’s multiple-hour exposures and Henry Fox Talbot’s paper negatives, and are a distillation of photography’s primary ingredients, light and time. 

     
    • Provenance

      Michael Mazzeo Gallery, New York

    • Exhibited

      One: Unique Photo-Based Images, Transformer Station, Cleveland, 18 September - 31 January 2021

HIGH VOLTAGE: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF FRED AND LAURA BIDWELL

251

Sunburned GSP#255 (Santa Cruz Mountains/Fog)

2008
Unique gelatin silver paper negative.
19 5/8 x 23 1/2 in. (49.8 x 59.7 cm)
Signed, titled, dated and copyright notation in pencil on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$3,000 - 5,000 

Sold for $10,160

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com
 

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 5 April 2024