FRAMES Photography Podcast with Christopher Wharton

In today’s episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Christopher Wharton, an artist-photographer whose passion for movement, born from skateboarding imagery in the late ’80s, continues to inform his dynamic visual storytelling—most recently recognized as a 2025 Photo Laureate nominee.

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Christopher Wharton was first introduced to skateboarding in the mid-1980s through Thrasher magazine and early skate videos, an experience that shaped both his vision and his relationship to culture. By 1990, he was photographing friends at local skate spots, and what began as simple documentation evolved into a visual practice attentive not only to action, but to the surfaces, spaces, and overlooked details that gave the scene its form.

In the early ’90s, skateboarding led him into Florida’s underground music world, where he documented bands in raw, DIY venues defined by energy, autonomy, and community. These experiences continue to inform his work, grounding it in a lasting respect for subcultures, informality, and what exists outside the mainstream.

Since the mid-2010s, his practice has turned toward the urban landscape, with a fine art approach centered on themes of resistance, erasure, and impermanence. His photographs focus on overlooked structures and remnants of place, offering a visual record of cities in transition—shaped by demolition, development, and the slow disappearance of cultural memory.

Influenced by documentary traditions, minimalism, and the New Topographics movement, he approaches photography as both archive and witness. His work has been exhibited in galleries as well as alternative venues, always with a commitment to revealing the subtle transformations and hidden histories embedded in everyday architecture and urban space.