Christopher Harris

Best known for the soft, painterly effects in his highly abstract compositions, photographer Christopher Harris often employs a hand-constructed pinhole camera and long exposures.

With the qualities of a subdued painted surface and quiet gradations of colors, Harris captures tranquil scenes that present boundless Northwest scenery. He often works in series, which include explorations of the Palouse region’s vast, agrarian expanses; Port Susan, an inlet of Puget Sound that he photographed from a single vantage point through all four seasons from daybreak to nightfall; twilight scenes of the Skagit Valley; and blossoms from the urban gardens of Seattle. His Two Coasts series features seascapes from Cape Cod and Southern California and the Prairie series captures the remnants of the original “Tallgrass” prairie of the America West.

Harris was the recipient of an Artist Trust Gap Grant in 2002 and is included in the survey, 100 artists of the West Coast by Doug Bullis (Schiffer Publishing, 2003). In 2004, he received a Merit Award in Current Works, at the Society for Contemporary Photography in Kansas City and the top prize out of 445 entries in the Northwest Eye, Humboldt Art Council’s juried exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum in California. The artist shows regularly in New York and has exhibited at the Whatcom Museum of History and Art and Bellevue Art Museum in Washington. A native of Illinois, Harris holds a Masters from Boston University and a Ph.D from Brown University. His work is included in the Photographic Center Northwest & King County Metro, Seattle, WA, King County Public Art Collection, Seattle, WA Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, WA, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, Overlake Medical Center, Bellevue, WA, Merrill Lynch, Seattle, WA, Kaiser Permanente, Portland, OR, Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, WA, and Schnitzer West, LLC, Seattle, Washington.