This is Chris Lee.
Chris Lee is a British photographer and filmmaker based in London. His practice explores human behaviour, the natural world and the relationship between external reality and inner experience. Drawing on story archetypes and the collective unconscious, his work moves between observation and imagination, often touching on internal conflicts, alternative realities and our connection to the world around us. Through photography and film, he uses the apparent truth of the image as a starting point for reinterpreting reality and uncovering its less visible dimensions.
Alongside his independent practice, Chris works as a Video Content Producer at RCA (the Royal College of Art), creating film and photographic content showcasing its world-leading community of academic staff and students. He studied Visual Communication at Central Saint Martins in London in 2006, went on to complete a diploma in Visual Storytelling at Les Gobelins in Paris in 2019, and later obtained a Master’s degree in Photography and Image-Making from Paris College of Art.
Chris co-founded the photography collective Tripod City, which publishes books and produces films documenting everyday life across cultures. Their short documentary The Piñata King, filmed during a photographic trip to Mexico, was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick, featured by National Geographic and recognised at the Booooooom TV Awards in 2017. His wider filmmaking practice spans short films, music videos, documentaries, events and commercial content for more than 150 brands. His debut short film, The Hedgehog, won Best Short Film and Best Director at the Los Angeles One-Reeler Competition and was nominated for the British Council Best Short Film award at the London Short Film Festival in 2015.
Features:
1ST PRIZE
MUSIC VIDEO 2009
I like to think of the frame as a window into another world. Through photography, I freeze moments in time, elevating ordinary people in candid gestures as though they were characters on a stage. I am drawn to strong, balanced compositions that isolate a person, object or action, presenting it with the clarity of a Renaissance portrait or a cross-section illustration in an instruction manual. I try to balance intention with chance, allowing things to unfold naturally while looking for moments when chaos and order fall into place.
My camera is a way of exploring the world, but also of understanding myself. When I encounter a new place, I look at how people gather, how they move through their surroundings, and how everyday rituals reveal something about the ways we live. I am interested in the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit, and in the details that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through observation and intuition, I look for openings in the familiar that might reveal something unexpected. For me, the act of making a photograph begins with being present.
I am drawn to images that exist between two states: observation and chance, reality and fiction, life and death, the inner and outer worlds. A photograph can become a portal between these landscapes, suspending us somewhere between what we see and what we imagine. I am interested in this ambiguity, and in the possibility that an image might connect us to something beyond our immediate experience.
I bring these photographs together in series and books, creating fragmented narratives that leave room for mystery and interpretation. Through solitude, black humour, internal and external conflict, archetypes and the collective unconscious, I explore the patterns that shape our lives and the less visible connections that bind us together.
