For summer 2026, SF Camerawork and Haines Gallery present two solo shows featuring major works by two acclaimed San Francisco Bay Area photographers. Chris McCaw and John Chiara are artists whose practices are deeply rooted in the history of photography while continually expanding the medium’s possibilities.

Presented consecutively in SF Camerawork’s gallery at Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture, Chris McCaw: Double Day (May 21 – June 21, 2026) and John Chiara: Bay Panel (June 26 – July 19, 2026) center on ambitious, large-scale works that exemplify each artist’s singular approach to image-making. Together, the exhibitions celebrate SF Camerawork’s central role within the SF Bay Area photography community and its decades-long commitment to supporting artists whose practices have challenged and redefined the field.

For both McCaw and Chiara, SF Camerawork has played an important role early in their artistic development, providing support and visibility at pivotal moments in their careers. These upcoming exhibitions honor that history while underscoring the organization’s lasting impact on photographers working in and around San Francisco for more than 50 years.

Chris McCaw: Double Day. Chris McCaw’s inventive process transforms photography’s essential components – light, time, and photosensitive materials – into physical records of duration and exposure, highlighting our place with a cosmos in motion. In his iconic “Sunburn” series, the lenses of his hand-built cameras function as magnifying glasses, allowing the sun to literally burn its path directly into light-sensitive paper.

At the heart of Chris McCaw: Double Day is “Sunburned GSP #860 (Double midnight, Galbraith Lake, Arctic Circle, Alaska)” (2015), the largest continuous “Sunburn” McCaw has realized to date. Created during the Arctic summer, this monumental 25-panel work traces the sun’s trajectory across the sky over the course of approximately 30 hours, capturing twice the phenomenon of the “midnight sun” near the Arctic Circle. Measuring more than 25 feet in length and comprising just as many panels of silver gelatin paper, the work is a breathtaking record of landscape and weather, labor, and the passage of time.

Chris McCaw: Double Day (continued). Though widely recognized as one of the artist’s most significant achievements, “Sunburned GSP #860” has never before been exhibited on the West Coast. Alongside “Sunburned GSP #860,” the exhibition features additional works that illuminate McCaw’s evolving investigations into the material limits and possibilities of photography itself.

John Chiara: Bay Panel. John Chiara describes his process as “part photography, part sculpture, and part event.” Working with and within enormous, hand-built cameras that he transports throughout Northern California on a flatbed trailer, the artist creates unique positive photographs directly onto color photographic paper, without the use of a negative. The resulting works retain visible traces of their making: hand-cut edges, tape marks, chemical streaking, and light leaks that foreground photography as a physical and performative act.

John Chiara: “Bay Panel” centers on the six-part, horizontal work from 2020 of the same title, originally commissioned by the Pilara Family Foundation for an exhibition in their former space. Shown only briefly before being placed in storage, the work now returns to public view for the first time. Stretching more than 24 feet in length, “Bay Panel” offers a sweeping meditation on the San Francisco Bay and the city’s layered photographic history. Referencing the panoramic traditions of 19th-century photographers such as Eadweard Muybridge, Chiara’s work captures the Bay’s shifting atmosphere alongside markers of urban development and commercial exchange, including the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco’s distinct skyline, and passing cargo ships, viewed from various vantages across the Bay. At once ethereal and finely detailed, “Bay Panel” highlights the dynamism and beauty of the SF Bay Area itself. Additional photographs included in the exhibition further demonstrate Chiara’s singular practice and his sustained engagement with the landscapes and histories of Northern California.

Artist-led public programs for each show will be announced soon.

Check SFCamerawork.org for updates.