Photographers

Chris Levine (born 1960 in Ontario, Canada) is an internationally celebrated British contemporary light artist, pioneer of holographic portraiture, and conceptual photographer whose multi-decade practice completely revolutionized the boundaries of three-dimensional lens-based media. Moving to the United Kingdom at an early age, Levine pursued a rigorous, multi-disciplinary creative education, graduating from Chelsea School of Art before completing an advanced Master of Arts degree in Graphic Design and Computers at the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Blending his technical knowledge of software design, optics, and laser technology, he rejected standard static film captures. Instead, Levine approached portraiture from a sensory and meditative perspective, utilizing custom-built digital camera tracks, sequential LED lighting arrays, and advanced lenticular lens systems to transform the human image into an active, breathing beacon of pure light waves.

Levine achieved immortal critical and global institutional acclaim when he was formally commissioned by the Jersey Heritage Trust in 2004 to create a defining portrait of Queen Elizabeth II to mark 800 years of allegiance to the British Crown. The resulting masterpiece, Lightness of Being, became an instant pop-culture icon and one of the most famous royal portraits in history. Using a customized digital scanner that glided along a motorized rail, Levine captured over ten thousand individual exposures over multiple passes. During a brief rest period between active scans, the Queen closed her eyes to rest, and Levine captured that exact fleeting, unscripted moment. The final lenticular print presented a deeply humanizing, serene, and vulnerable profile of the monarch that appeared to float in three-dimensional space, permanently subverting the traditional rigid formalities of state portraiture. He expanded this technical methodology through successive landmark collaborations with global icons, executing highly praised, multi-dimensional light portraits of the Dalai Lama, Kate Moss, Grace Jones, and Ranulph Fiennes.

Operating at the cutting edge of large-scale public art installations, sensory laser design, and electronic visual sociology, Levine has consistently pushed the structural boundaries of gallery presentation. His active practice extended fluidly into the mid-2020s through monumental, site-specific light installations that address global interconnectedness and spiritual harmony, notably his large-scale laser projection series iy_project at Glastonbury Festival and his historic installation Molecule of Light at the Eden Project. His ongoing visual research has been celebrated through prestigious museum exhibitions and gallery retrospectives across Europe, Asia, and North America, including standalone features at the National Portrait Gallery in London and international contemporary art spaces. Levine’s master lenticular prints, high-intensity laser scripts, and archival digital composites are permanently curated in prestigious core collections worldwide, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Science Museum Group, the Royal Collection Trust, and prominent corporate fine-art registries, establishing his legacy as the premier pioneer of 21st-century light-based archiving.