Sunburned GSP#737 (Santa Cruz Mountains)
Photograph
Sunburned GSP#737 (Santa Cruz Mountains)
From Sunburn
2013
Gelatin silver prints
Unique print
Each Image: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)
Frame: 70 x 162.6 cm (27 9/16 x 64 in.)
Purchase with funds from the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, 2014
2014.0085.0001
Inscriptions verso (pencil): [signed, titled and dated]
TextTo make this work, Chris McCaw built his own large-format camera, fit it with a military-grade aerial reconnaissance lens obtained on eBay, and loaded it with outdated photographic paper. He then set the camera outdoors on a tripod and pointed it at the sun, which seared the paper as it traveled across the sky, burning an arc straight through. During the hours it took to make the exposure, the artist contemplated the landscape and talked to passersby while monitoring its progress. The resulting work serves to heighten our awareness not only of the photograph’s physical properties, but also of its nature as an object in time, one that both records and experiences duration.
