London-based, and born fine-art, photographer Chris Ward’s work explores “now” as the nexus of history and future. The present as a boundary between history and future, is where our minds spend the least time. His work is about colonising the present and offers a way for the viewer to experience the now. The instant of an image being captured is a freezing of a fragment of now. Any subversion of that “now” belongs to the viewer. His images are peculiar abstractions of reality that block out the experiential past and visions of the future. The act of viewing becomes the present. Influenced by Richard Avedon, Ernst Haas, Carl Jung, René Magritte, Mark Rothko and Sebastiao Salgado, his style developed from an artisanal approach to shooting film and creating photographic prints in his darkroom. His work is largely digital now. He sees digital tools evolving the way for him to stretch out and play. Abstraction through cropping, distorting point of view and perspective and artful repetition feeds into the subconscious. Each piece is a kind of photographic mandala. His earlier exposure has been in commissions for Covent Garden store-front windows as display installations, publications in Creative Camera, Financial Times Weekend and Time Out London. During lockdown and beyond he has directed his work towards Instagram. He has many shows and collaborations. Such as the Arts Council’s Year of the Artist as part of the collective “The Group” making a giant surreal Photographic installation with and about Charlton Athletic’s fans “The Addicks”. Chris Ward is represented by Raghad Mardini’s Litehouse Gallery and has exhibited in 2020 with Litehouse at Kensington and Chelsea Art Week in their Show Home through the Artists’ Eyes. He has produced much of the documentary imagery for several shows they have produced. Currently he is researching Huguenots as the first refugees and their influences on Britain from the mid-17th Century to develop an exhibition piece celebrating the important contributions of refugees to our cultural and technological life, for the V&A.