Chris Friel is literally the reason why I got into alternative photography 12 years ago Christoffer Relander 2022
I’m not sure I know of anyone more consistently creative, inventive, moving or evocative Justin Sutcliffe 2021
Coming across an ICM image by Chris Friel was a lightbulb moment for me. He continues to be a source of inspiration to this day - such a brilliant imagination, forever changing and pushing away at boundaries valda Bailey / icm photography magazine 2021
coming across his work was life changing. I credit the fact that I do what I do entirely down to Friel. he looks at the world differently from anyone I know Doug Chinnery / Biblioscapes January 2021
Friel gave me permission to be ‘dark’, invigorated and inspired me and made me realise that wanting to break away was ok. I was transfixed by his eerie, dream/nightmare-like and often quite featureless landscapes. I loved his disregard for convention, yet at the same time his work always appeared to fit jan gray / on landscape November 2020
friel sees the world differently and translates his outlook through his experimental photographic practice. he is known as one of the most innovative image makers working today Anna Bonita Evans - back and white magazine 2018
Friel is a creative genius who thinks freely and is unafraid to experiment in order to find a new path Doug chinnery - on landscape 2018
art is always evolving and challenging not only itself, but also society's preconceptions of it. so the world of photography now embraces visions as diverse as Henri Cartier Bresson, Alexey Titarenko and Chris Friel Andrew James Kirkwood - chromographix 2018
two of the most notable contemporary abstract photographers are Chris Friel and Michael Kenna. Chris Friel started his creative career as a painter and his smudgy, soft focus landscapes seem to straddle both painterly and photographic styles Mick Thurman - a history of landscape photography 2018
before coming across the work of chris friel, everything I’d been fed from other photographers was all about sharpness. But here was this image looking back at me from the screen where almost nothing was sharp. I went back to his photostream constantly over the next two or three days, and I realised there was another way of expressing myself with photography Doug Chinnery - composition masterclass 2018
my main influence over the past ten years or so has been Chris Friel. I first saw an image of his in a magazine and my first thought was that it must be a painting Kevin marston - on landscape 2018
The haunting, desolate landscapes of friel are passing fragments of stories untold dark silence - 2017
As a contemporary image maker friel is of his time, his brokendown, disintegrated, deconstructed, and reformed subjects are embued with soliditiy, frailty, mass, texture, and extreme juxtapositions of tone and shape, at times bold in their reforming and others mere ghosts and smears of their original states, they are compelling images. I feel I, and sense many others, have in the past strived for something that ultimately makes us the same, perhaps a want or need to be accepted by an orthodoxy. Friel challenges this, uniquely Jonathan bell - does photography have to be so boring ? 2016
