Fotobudz Press Kit – Photography, Narrative & Sound
Christopher Wheeler transforms trauma, dissociation, and urban decay into immersive visual and sonic narratives.
Biography & Artist Statement
Bio:
Christopher Wheeler is a multimedia fine-art photographer and creative storyteller based in Beaumont, California. Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), he transforms lived trauma into immersive art experiences. Merging urban exploration, architectural decay, narrative, and AI-collaborated music, Wheeler reshapes how fragmentation is seen and felt. His artistic mission is to make unseen parts of identity visible, forging empathy through image and sound.
Artist Statement
Fotobudz is more than photography — it is a portal into liminal spaces between memory and silence, voices and stillness. Each image is accompanied by narrative or sound, guiding the viewer into layered inner landscapes of dissociation and resilience. I aim not for decorative images, but to reframe trauma as texture, fracture as narrative, and empathy as the bridge between viewer and subject.
Selected Credentials & Press
2025 | Professional Photographers Gallery – Save Ellis Island Foundation, NJ | 10 images included
2025 – The Coast News, “Vista’s First Cannabis Festival …” (Photo credit: Chris Wheeler | Fotobudz)
2023 – San Diego Reader, “Kyle Turley and other NFL stars stand by marijuana” (Photo credit: FotoBudz)
Selected Works & Exhibitions
Save Ellis Island Collection
These images form part of a ten-image collection currently featured in the Save Ellis Island Professional Photographers Gallery. Captured during the Private Hard Hat Photo Tour — a behind-the-scenes experience of Ellis Island’s hospital complex — these corridors, patient wards, and isolation rooms stand as silent witnesses to forgotten stories. Each frame seeks to preserve what time tried to erase, reminding us that history still breathes within these walls. The following are some of the featured pieces.
Echoes of Care (Sep. 2025)
Ward Corridor, Ellis Island Hospital
Captured during a private hard-hat tour of the southern hospital complex, this frame reflects the silent architecture of memory — where emptiness becomes a witness to forgotten human stories.
Silent Reflection (Sep. 2025)
Ward Washroom, Ellis Island Hospital A mirror faintly frames the silhouette of Lady Liberty beyond the window - inside, dual sinks stand witness to the erasure of care.
Threshold Memory (Sep. 2025)
Corridor, Ellis Island Hospital
A portrait of a girl—installed by French artist JR during his Unframed – Ellis Island project—emerges from a weathered door inside the abandoned hospital on Ellis Island. Her silent gaze bridges ruin and remembrance in a space where history lingers.
Sterile Witness (Sep. 2025)
Operating Room, Ellis Island Hospital
A lone surgical sink sits in the center of a once-active operating theater. The cold tile and shadowed walls echo forgotten procedures and silent histories — an interior stillness that holds
The Chair Movement Series
This gallery series emerged from a resolve to stop hiding and begin witnessing. Chairs found in decay, forgotten lots, and empty rooms become stand-ins for survivors. Each chip, crack, and beam of light whispers resilience. No story is left unseen. No life unheard.
The Chair Movement is designed as a flexible, traveling installation for galleries and institutions, often paired with narrative text and sound.
Vestige of Presence (Sep. 2025)
Solitary Room, Ellis Island Hospital
An empty chair rests in peeling paint and fractured light — a haunting echo of The Chair Movement’s voice, reminding us that even in abandonment, presence lingers.
Haven in Decay (April 2025)
Backyard, South San Diego
A bent plastic chair rests in my childhood friend’s yard — part of The Chair Movement, this reclaimed space has become a second home, a quiet refuge where memory, healing, and sanctuary reside even amid transformation.
Vivid Refuge (May 2025)
Miami, Oklahoma
A mint-teal chair sits against a bold red house in a mostly abandoned neighborhood — a quiet symbol of sanctuary, memory, and resilience within The Chair Movement.
Empty Witness
Underpass near Union Station, LA
Under the overpass, a sea of silent chairs stretches across concrete — each one a protest of absence, a tribute to missing lives. In August 2025, I photographed this stark installation as a witness to fractures and unresolved stories, especially for DID survivors still unheard. These chairs stand in for bodies, turning invisibility into presence.
Mission and Concept
Fotobudz exists to turn forgotten places and fractured identities into bridges of understanding — merging image, sound, and story to help others recognize beauty and strength within their brokenness.
This approach is informed by my lived experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), where internal fragmentation mirrors the fractured spaces I photograph.
Concept
My work merges trauma healing and architecture by exploring their shared language of structure and fracture. Abandoned hospitals, collapsed corridors, and lonely chairs mirror internal landscapes of dissociation — places once inhabited, now echoing memory. In photographing these spaces, I rebuild from ruin: reframing trauma not as a wound to hide, but as a designed form to understand. Each doorway, shadow, and shaft of light becomes a possibility for restoration — a blueprint of resilience inscribed in decay.
Room of Echoes (Sep. 2025)
A single chair in a vast, crumbling ward — an architecture of absence, a portrait of unseen selves. In this frame, decay and memory converge, offering a quiet blueprint of resilience and reclaiming silence as voice.
Closing Statement
I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in early 2025 — a moment that shattered and awakened me. The stigma and silence surrounding DID revealed how many live unseen. Instead of letting it define me, I turned pain into purpose.
Through Fotobudz, I transform trauma into art — each photograph, story, and AI-collaborated sound a step toward healing and visibility. My work bridges fractured inner worlds with the physical spaces that mirror them, proving that brokenness can hold beauty and strength.
This is more than my story — it’s a shared one. If you’ve ever felt unseen or divided within yourself, you’re not alone. Visit Fotobudz.com, explore the imagery and soundscapes, and join the movement to illuminate what’s been forgotten. Together, we can turn silence into understanding and pain into resilience.
Let’s work together.
Contact me for exhibitions and interviews.