Special Edition with Print: Sunburn by Chris McCaw

ABOUT THE SPECIAL EDITION

Special Edition of Sunburn by Chris McCaw With Unique Paper Negative

Candela Books is excited to present twenty-one special edition Sunburn books, each in a custom clamshell case with laser burned baltic birch covers, and each with a 4 x 5 inch unique paper negative by McCaw. All together these twenty-one images, each one burned through the paper, comprise a single unique work which captures a sunrise over San Francisco Bay on August 10th, 2012. Included with the signed copy of Sunburn and special edition paper negative is a handmade accordion-fold booklet which depicts all the images from the complete work.

This beautiful piece was specially created to celebrate the release of Sunburn, Chris McCaw’s first monograph and Candela Books’ third book release.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Sunburn, a collection of groundbreaking images from American photographer Chris McCaw, is titled quite literally. By constructing his own cameras – one camera weighing in at 125 pounds and large enough that it needs to be mounted on a garden cart – and exposing directly onto large expired gelatin silver papers for extended exposures, from several hours up to 24 hours, McCaw manages to coax highly controlled and delicate depictions of primeval landscapes and seascapes while at the same time allowing the sun, throughout its trajectory, to graphically sear its path across the surface of his prints, often cutting completely through the prints when the sun is at its strongest points.

McCaw has taken this notion of simultaneous creation / destruction and harnessed the resulting tension, working with the unpredictable process so elegantly that he manages a polished and highly crafted style but one which remains dependent upon the brute and visceral contribution of chance and light and the spin of the earth. And because he works directly with paper negatives, which are solarized by the prolonged exposures, each resulting image is unique, less like a photograph and more a three-dimensional object rendered using the sun as a reductive tool.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Chris McCaw’s photography is represented in many notable public and private collections including: George Eastman House International Museum of Photography, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, Texas; The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California. McCaw has also received a New Works Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation in 2008.