Chris has been getting his hands wet in the darkroom from the age of 13, and since then he has been unable separate his personal life from his photographic life. In a constant state of production of photographic work from that early age, he continues to be excited about the medium.
The early years involved self taught explorations in skateboarding/zine /punk scenes with a fisheye lens and Tri-X through the mid-late 80’s. After high school he learned everything he could about photography. Finally he fell in love with the simplicity of large format cameras, and in 1992 got his first 4”x5”. The following year he fell in love with the platinum/palladium printing process and even larger cameras. To this day Chris makes his living through the platinum/palladium process. Currently he’s working the boundaries of analogue photographic mediums with his project titled Sunburn.
McCaw’s work has been exhibited at institutions including the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY; George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Portland Art Museum, OR; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Somerset House, London, UK. His work is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Chrysler Art Museum, Norfolk, VA; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; George Eastman House; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; and many private collections. In 2014, McCaw received the Emerging Icon in Photography award from the George Eastman House.