Chris McCaw (San Francisco, CA) www.chrismccaw.com and www.michealmazzeo.com

Chris McCaw (San Francisco, CA), Sunburned GSP #129 (Manteca), 2007, Unique gelatin silver paper negative, 10 x 8 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Michael Mazzeo Gallery, NYC

Chris McCaw (San Francisco, CA), Sunburned GSP #53 (Mojave), 2007, Unique gelatin silver paper negative, 10 x 8 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Michael Mazzeo Gallery, NYC

Chris McCaw (San Francisco, CA), Sunburned GSP #99 (Utah), 2008, Unique gelatin silver paper negative, 14 x 11 inches, Courtesy of the artist and Michael Mazzeo Gallery, NYC

Artist Statement

In 2003, an all night exposure of the stars made during a camping trip was lost due to the effects of whiskey. Unable to wake up to close the shutter before sunrise, all the information of the night's exposure was destroyed. The intense light of the rising sun was so focused and intense that it physically changed the film. Instead of throwing this away and moving on from this “accident,” I have spent the past few years carefully perfecting a different version of the original process and testing the boundaries of analog photography.

By severely overexposing vintage photographic paper in my homemade large format cameras with specialized military reconnaissance lenses, the suns help me to blur the concept of a photograph as being a simple representation of reality . Through hour-long exposures or short ones that are evenly or randomly spaced, the sun goes into the camera, literally burning its path into the final, one-of-a-kind paper negative. With the change of seasons come variation of the angle of the sun's trajectory, imprinting where and what time of year the image was made. The results are an eerie reversal of tonalities along with the remnants of ignition that occurred inside the camera.

This project has sparked all kinds of ideas regarding time, seasons, environmental issues, and the photographic process beyond traditional representation. My favorite part is watching smoke come out of the camera and the vague scent of roasted marshmallows as the gelatin in the paper cooks.