Sunburn

I have always been interested in the process of photography- light sensitive materials, chemical reactions, the unexpected. In my case, during camping trip in 2003, I mixed an all night time exposure of the sky, friends, a campfire, and a bottle of whiskey. What

I ended up with was a new way of thinking about the process of photography, and a new body of work.

I woke up the next morning, around 10am, far after the sun had risen. I had pointed my camera due east, right into the sun. Assuming the shot was a complete loss, I stumbled out of my sleeping bag  and closed the shutter. Later that day while downloading that day’s exposed film, I could feel one of the sheets had a tear in it. Completely confused, I was tempted to throw the sheet away. Luckily I kept it and discovered what had happened a week later in the darkroom.

The camera, with it’s lens focused at infinity with the aperture wide open to capture the movement of the nights stars became something like a magnifying glass. Much like my early experiments with small scale pyromania using mom’s magnifying glass focusing the sun on dry dead leafs, the camera’s lens was burning the film inside the camera.

But this is just part of it. Another physical aspect that occurs to light sensitive emulsions when subjected to intense exposure to light is something called true solariztion-image reversal through extreme over-exposure. Not to be mistaken with the darkroom printing technique called the sebbatie effect, of re-exposing paper to light while the print is developing, also commonly called solarized prints. I fist knew of this reaction to extreme over exposure through Ansel’s  “The Black Sun”.

I then learned about it in making daguerreotypes where the extreme blue sensitive silver plate required very long exposures to retain detail in the non sky subject matter. The sky would usually get so bright it would tone down slightly and would no longer be the actual brightest tone in the image.

So this accident happened, I developed the film, and learned just how far you could take the idea of over exposure. For about 3 years I played around burning film in the camera and then printing the resulting negative in platinum. I found myself confused by this method. I could see something that lookes like a burn but it’s evidence a removed by making a print . I was unsatisfied with the resulting print and I kept looking at the actual in camera negative with the scorched emulsion.

Then a light bulb went off in my head, why bother with the traditional negative to print method and just transition to making direct in camera paper negatives. I put old expired gelatin silver enlarging paper in my film holders and found what I was looking for.  Now you could actually see the action of the sun burning it’s path in the sky on to the paper. When the conditions are right, the burning goes all the way through the paper base. The subject of the photograph reverses through solarization, and the unique paper negative becomes a one of a kind paper positive. When processed properly, you get work with more then just a sillouette.

This move to paper negatives really transformed the project and sparked so many ideas.

Not only is the resulting image a representation of the subject photographed, but part of the subject (the sun) is an active participant in the printmaking. Light, the most basic need in creating a photograph, is converted into energy. This energy both creates and destroys the resulting photograph.

These photographs open up new ideas in the traditional photographic process.

Just when the digital folks thought analog image making was dead. There’s still room to grow! I must admit as someone who still likes to get his hands wet, this is a good feeling.

Also this work reminds me of the very beginnings of photography. Niepce’s first photograph, taken in camera, in 1826 is a good place to start. His paper negative required many hours long exposure to record the camera’s view.

While showing my work to Michael Light, artist of the book “100 Suns” photographs of nuclear bomb tests, he was reminded that some negatives documenting the first nuclear test were actually burned by the intense light of the blast.

Another aspect of this project is working with one of a kind prints. For being  a photographer, this has been a real transformation in my thinking about art and photographic reproduction.

When I first showed this work at a small gallery in west Oakland, I remember  being tormented that some of my sunburn prints had sold and I would never be able to make another copy. I also remember my friends (painters, illustrators. sculptures), quickly pointing out that that is how most of the art in the world is made. When these artists are invited to have an exhibition in a gallery, they don’t pull out old work, These guys see it as an opportunity to create new work. Maybe nothing sells, but the act of being creative, trying to say something, anything , that’s the real point of being an artist.

Actually, when I was invited to have an exhibition there, the main requirement was that I could only show NEW WORK.

After I relaxed and got out of the mindset of editioned prints, I found the idea of making one of a kind works really liberating. For the past ten years I have been working on a project of my grandparents farm. It is an ongoing project, but there is the reality that I am showing some prints I made in 1997. I am not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. I am saying that I feel this project has been such a part of my identity, I have found it at times to be creatively stagnating. Not to mention matching prints made 10 year ago with different batches or kinds of materials.

I now love the simplicity of unique paper negatives. You have an idea, you create it, it’s done. No messing around with going back to a negative trying different dodging and burning strategies. You’ve got one shot and that’s it. When the times to expose just one print can reach up to 4 hours, which may or may not work, you learn to relax and just let go.

Working with this aesthetic, I love the ideas going through my head of the possibilities. Time, abstraction, even the visual representation of Morse code, the different directions seem unending.  I feel this work is still in its infancy. I am excited of what’s to come.

-Chris McCaw
San Francisco, CA

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