Oro Valley Photographic Artist

Chris Grey

Photographs that don’t look like photographs.

About the Artist

Chris Grey, an Oro Valley photographer, has made images for a living since he was 15. More than 50 years later, the Oro Valley photographer is doing the work he says he was always meant to do. Not photographs exactly. Something stranger and more interesting than that.

Chris takes a strong photograph and pushes it until it stops looking like one. The results read like wide-brush oil paintings, delicate watercolors, or antique prints with the soul of a charcoal sketch. Every piece starts with a sharp, well-lit original, and then he builds the finished look himself, layer by layer.

A Life Behind the Camera

Chris grew up in Winona, Minnesota. In eighth grade, his father gave him a Brownie darkroom kit, and the two set up in a cloakroom. He made his first print for a grade school science fair. “I was hooked,” he says.

At 15 he shot his first wedding, his first senior portrait, and his first advertising job. He moved to Minneapolis at 21 and opened his studio in 1972. From there, he became the first photographer for MPLS (Minneapolis) Magazine, which became Twin Cities, and for Corporate Report. Advertising work followed, including national campaigns for Home Depot, Target, 3M, and some of the Milk Mustache athletes for the Dairy Association.

He also wrote 15 books on photography, mostly about lighting, and taught workshops in Italy, Spain, and London. He has been a featured speaker at Wedding Portrait Photographers International in Las Vegas and at the London Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers.

The Technique

In the 1980s, Chris made a mistake alone in a darkroom. Instead of tossing the print, he reached for alternative chemistry and ended up with an image that looked like a cross between an antique photograph and a charcoal sketch. It took him two years to learn to control it. It became the foundation of a long run of gallery work, especially with the human figure.

Today the darkroom is digital, but the idea is the same. Chris works in Photoshop the way he once worked with chemistry, using filters and brushes to shape each image by hand. He uses AI tools only for tasks like removing objects and cleaning up backgrounds. He doesn’t tell AI to make the art. He builds it himself.

The approach comes with one rule. The technique amplifies what is already there, so the photograph underneath has to be right. Decades of commercial work taught him to get the foundation perfect first.

 

Why Oro Valley

Chris and his wife, Sue, first came to the area on trips to see her parents, who began spending winters here in 1994. After years of visiting and driving around with a camera, the couple retired to Oro Valley and have lived here ever since.

What keeps him here is the light. The Sonoran Desert shifts every twenty minutes, turning ordinary geology into something that makes you stop the car. After half a century studying what light does, Chris found a place that does it better than almost anywhere else.

A Curious Eye

Most photographers narrow down. Chris has always gone the other way. His portfolio spans botanicals, classical dance, the figurative nude, architectural abstracts, vintage-look prints, landscapes, classic cars, and monogram wall art.

“I’m intensely curious about how things look,” he says, “and I love playing with my toys. The most important thing for my head is that I will never stop learning.”

Chris Grey at Sonoran Art

Sonoran Art is proud to add Chris Grey’s work to the gallery, available as fine art prints. Browse the Chris Grey collection.