New Works

Chris McCaw returns to Candela Gallery in his second solo exhibition featuring work from his recent projects, as well as new work from his Sunburn series. Over the last decade, Chris has continued to push the boundaries of the photographic medium, sharing his unconventional techniques for capturing the movement and the power of the sun as it travels through his viewfinder. With hand-built cameras and vintage photographic paper, McCaw creates unique pieces documenting the sun’s movement through illusory land and seascapes. Long exposures throughout a day, or over multiple days, materialize as marks and burns made directly by the sun’s light as it exposes the paper. As McCaw writes, through this collaborative process, “the sun has become an active participant in part of the printmaking.”

The exhibition features new works from McCaw’s Tidal series (2013-present), which builds on long exposures, and documents the rise and fall of the tides as they reveal sections of the shoreline. McCaw’s Cirkut series (2015) was produced in the Arctic Circle with a modified 1913 Cirkut camera—a rotating camera that was the first of its kind to create panoramic photographs. With a 10-foot long scroll of vintage photo paper, and a potential for 80 hours of continuous exposure, these images capture multiple sunrises and sunsets in one image. In his Poly-Optic and Heliograph projects (2012-present), McCaw ventures into the abstract by creating multiple exposure images with up to 63 lenses, directly writing with light. Permeating the work, McCaw’s unique methods and innovative processes repurpose traditional photographic techniques while forging a new path for the medium.