Chris McCaw is equal parts adventurer, scientist and creator. His practice requires traveling to remote locations with heavy equipment, with the intent of capturing place and recording time. Using analogue photographic techniques, McCaw draws upon the past to invent new processes. He shoots directly onto expired silver gelatin paper with hand-made cameras equipped with military-level optics. These long-exposure, unique images are physical evidence of the sun's movement across the sky. With exposure times ranging from a few hours to over three days, the intensity of the sunlight burns the paper negative in the process. Balancing sensitive materials and hand-made equipment through rough terrain and adverse weather conditions, the resulting images are quiet abstractions and solarised studies capturing the movement of the sun.
The first photograph was taken in 1826, and this process was called a heliograph or 'sun drawing'. By harnessing the limitations of the medium and simultaneously celebrating and challenging the realities of silver gelatin printing and analogue technology, Chris McCaw is reinventing the concepts behind that very first photograph to his own contemporary means.