When she pulls out her film camera, photographer Chole Huls aims to capture the “little moments” of life.
She knows how important memorializing those moments can be. The Phoenix photographer lost her father, Michael, when she was 17 years old. She keeps a stack of photos of him – sitting in a sports car, alongside her mother Julia, on his fishing boat – in her Downtown apartment at Moontower Phoenix.
“I think that’s why I love photography so much, too, and why I see so much value, is because when someone passes, these are the only things you have left,” she says.
The self-taught photographer started with digital cameras but became intrigued with the analog practice after shooting a roll for the first time in 2020. “It’s a little bit more intentional,” Huls says. “I like that it forces you to slow down.”
After graduating from the University of Arizona, she returned to her childhood home of Phoenix to launch a wedding and commercial photography business in 2020 and works from the Downtown co-working space The McKinley Club. Ultimately, she hoped to also exhibit some of her creative, globe-spanning photography, but figured that’d be years down the road. An artist residency through Moontower gave her the opportunity to accelerate those plans.
Huls’ first year of the residency made her debut exhibition, Ojitos, possible. The phrase means “little eyes” in Spanish, a tribute to her multicultural upbringing – her mother is Peruvian and the family split its time between the Valley and the Mexican beach town of San Carlos, on the Sea of Cortez. “Spending my childhood there really shaped my photography,” Huls says.
Her work has an overexposed quality that creates a bright, dreamy, vintage aesthetic, offering glimpses from far-flung locales such as the Dolomites, the Mediterranean and German forests. Though Ojitos is no longer on display, for Huls’ second year of the residency, she has made prints from the exhibition available for purchase, and is exploring publishing a coffee table book.
“It’s been a great platform to showcase the greater Phoenix community,” Huls says of the residency program, which has included artists in mediums ranging from music to murals. Learn more at chloehuls.com or @chloe_huls on Instagram.
