CIRKUT

“The longer you’re up there, the greater the sensation of the Earth’s rotation—this blue marble spinning in space. It’s an amazing experience to be so aware of the circular rotation of our planet as you watch the sun seemingly cycle all the way around you in the sky without ever setting. I wanted to capture that majestic motion, and the Cirkut camera became the logical tool.”

Chris McCaw creates landscape photographs that incorporate the apparent movement of the sun, which burns its path into vintage photo paper exposed using large format cameras. His series ‘Cirkut’ was taken with a modified 1913 Cirkut camera—a rotating analog camera originally designed to photograph panoramic views on large rolls of film. For the works included in this book, McCaw traveled to Alaska, camping for many weeks within the Arctic Circle during the summer months when the sun never sets. Navigating weather and wilderness conditions, McCaw’s camera slowly made 360 degree rotations, tracking the sun across hours and days. The resulting work expresses the extraordinary relationship between Earth and the star at the center of our solar system.

This work, centering on the artist’s patient observations of time and light, was handmade into a two-sided accordion book with selected pieces, ‘Cirkut #6’ and ‘Cirkut #7’. The limited edition artist’s book includes a wooden bookcase made to resemble the film holder of a large format camera, the artist’s notes on the work, and an exposure test strip made from the same vintage photographic paper used in the original Cirkut camera exposures.