Photo: Aaron Wessling, courtesy Portland Art Museum, OR
A Brief History of Photography: The Landscape features a large selection of photographs depicting landscapes from the Portland Art Museum's collection. Dating from the earliest years of the medium to the present, these photographs demonstrate the many ways that individuals have produced pictures over time along with their interpretations of the landscape. From daguerreotypes to modern day's digital captures printed with ink, the history of photography is marked by rapid advances in equipment and chemical processes. Chris McCaw's unique gelatin silver paper negative print gifted to the Museum in 2012 is on display in the exhibition.
McCaw’s artistic practice is firmly rooted in the history of photography while pushing the medium in new directions. Utilizing hand-built cameras, McCaw’s inventive process takes photography’s essential components — light and time, lenses and light-sensitive materials — to generate startlingly inventive photographic forms. His elegant, highly crafted images speak to a mastery of complex, analog photographic processes, revealing landscapes shaped at once by geography, astronomy, and his own experimental rigor.
Learn more at portlandartmuseum.org.
