Photos to Inspire
Photos to Inspire: Chris McCaw
By Lynne Eodice
Apr 1, 2006

All images © Chris McCaw

Detail #10, Grandpa's Shop, Manteca, CA 2000

A California native, San Francisco-based Chris McCaw is a successful fine-art photographer who shoots with a 7x17-inch large-format camera, which he built himself. He also does his own platinum/palladium printing, and has offered a “Digital Platinotype” service on his website since 1996, in which he creates platinum/palladium prints from his customers’ original negatives. McCaw enjoys revealing “how beautiful and strange life can be” in his images, which can be seen in his Road Trip Portfolio, Family Farm Catalog, and Manteca Portfolio on his website, http://www.chrismccaw.com.
 
He explains that the 7x17-inch camera is part of a family of extra-large format cameras known as “banquet cameras.” Before enlarging negatives became possible, he says, this aspect ratio was ideal for capturing large groups in prints where everyone would be recognizable. “In 1994, I purchased my first 7x17 banquet camera,” McCaw states, “which dated from the late 1800s. It was an expensive antique that I worried about far too much.” For this reason, and to aid in his “post-art-school financial situation,” he sold this camera and decided to build his own.

“Two months and $150 later I had my own homemade 7x17-inch view camera,” McCaw relates. “Everything from the frame to the ground glass—even the bellows—I made myself. Some inventiveness came about due to lack of funds, including using hacksaw blades for the back’s spring mechanism. By doing all this, I was able to use the camera in very precarious situations—in the middle of a stream, on the side of a cliff, it does not matter. With the freedom that I could fix anything that went wrong with the camera myself, I could take risks. It really loosened my shooting style. Since 1995, the camera has been in constant use. Though I have had to do some repairs and modifications, it has survived.” McCaw uses Ilford FP4 black-and-white film, but says that large-format film is getting very hard to find these days.

Hope, Portland, OR 1997

About platinum/palladium printing, McCaw states, “The unique characteristics of platinum/palladium prints include a long tonal scale capable of reproducing every subtle tonality from shadows to highlights in a delicate and smooth fashion, a naturally warm print color, and permanence…Each print I make has a brush applied coating onto 100% rag paper. During the print exposure, the brushed areas outside of the edges of the negative turn black. Because of manual application, each print has a variety of brush marks, no one exactly like the next. In some way, each print has its own signature.” It was because of his early appreciation for platinum/palladium printing, he notes, that he began using a large-format camera. “If you want to have a 7x17-inch print, you need a negative the exact same size.”

Click Here to View a Gallery of Chris McCaw's Images

McCaw’s work has been exhibited at Baxter/Chang/Patri Fine Art, San Francisco; the San Francisco International Airport Museum; Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA; International Fototage, Mannheim, Germany; Watermark Fine Art, Houston, TX; and Image Gallery, Orthez, France; among many other galleries. His images are part of the “Vital Signs” collection at George Eastman House (a traveling exhibit), University of Texas, Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, De Anza College, and other private collections.

Editor’s Note: We thank Chris McCaw for sharing his images with us in double exposure.     



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