McWee, Neil

American, b. 1957

BiographyNeil McWee is a landscape photographer and master printer of Scottish and Canadian descent. His engagement with landscape photography is reflective of his previous study of forestry and long-held interest in the stewardship of trees. Photographic craftsmanship is of utmost importance to McWee, who worked as a master printer for many years, creating dye transfer prints for Ilford as well as for many photographers, including Paul Capanigro, Francis Caldwell, Art Wolfe, Mark Abrahamson, and Eliot Porter. His photographs in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography are silver dye bleach prints (commonly known as Cibachrome or Ilfochrome) representative of his landscape work. The majority of these images were photographed using a view camera and Fuji Velvia, a highly saturated color reversal film with very fine grain, while Winter, The Gorge #1 and Winter, The Gorge #2, from McWee’s Silver Fantasies body of work, were photographed with a Pentax 6x7. McWee studied with John Bache and Judy Fiskin at the California Institute of the Arts. His work is held in several collections, including the Washington State Art Collection and the Zion National Park Museum Collection in Springdale, Utah. McWee has lived in Seattle, Washington, since the 1980s.