I Love New Haven
Photo exhibit by Chris Randall
City Hall
New Haven
July 19, 2025 opening
After getting his drone license back in December, photographer Chris Randall, who has spent 13 years dedicating himself to documenting the city, started branching into aerial photography and videography. He snapped an overlook of Fair Haven Heights as his first-ever drone picture. Displayed as a print on shiny metal, it was the first photo that caught my eye at Randall’s new exhibit at City Hall, “A Portrait of New Haven: Where We Belong.”
The exhibit features broad cityscapes, portraits full of character, and even a rare New Haven Sasquatch sighting. Two large video screens — one horizontal and one vertical — play aerial videography from Randall’s new drone work. The show is a mix of these new aerial methods and the detailed on-the-ground documentation Randall has come to be known for in the city.
That first aerial photo of Fair Haven Heights is also printed as a wall-size installation at the Mary Wade nursing home and assisted living facility in Fair Haven. Randall has since heard stories of seniors at the home using his detailed photograph to point out places they had lived and known over the years. Stories like these, which attendees at Friday’s show opening echoed, are a testament to both Randall’s skill and his heart.
The opening crowd in City Hall atrium’s quieted and gathered in a semi-circle as Randall took a moment to speak. He looked around. A man used to doing the seeing, he looked a little dazed to be the object of attention.
He broke the tension with a truism: “Obviously, I love New Haven.”
The crowd laughed. They knew that already, whether it was from the title of the exhibit, the way Randall talked about his photography subjects, or the 2012-founded “I Love New Haven” website on which Randall and his team share beautiful, true-to-the-heart scenes from the Elm City.
Randall is generous with his craft. If you liked our coverage last month of fashion designer Tea Montgomery’s train station fashion show, for example, you might enjoy Randall’s gallery of over 600 pictures from the event.
At Friday’s event, Randall offered to take a few questions from the audience. One person asked how long Randall’s exhibit would be up. “Actually, I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’ll be up forever.”
“Standard is a month,” said New Haven Department of Arts, Culture, and Tourism’s Myles-Amir Riley. There’s flexibility, though, with some of the decision-making up to Randall himself. Forever might be a stretch, but for New Haven’s number-one fan? You never know.
Another attendee asked why Randall started branching into aerial photography.
“Ultimately, getting on rooftops,” Randall replied. “I used to have to finagle my way on rooftops.” These days, with his drone equipment, Randall sees doors open for him more easily.
He’s already started getting jobs from the drone videos — for aerial photography and videography, but also for his regular camera work. The drone footage gets his foot in the door. “The interest in that is through the roof,” he told me, noting that he since he started posting the aerial work on Facebook, he gained 6,000 new followers in just the past few months.
“I like it because it’s a new way to explore and present the city that I love,” he said.
Someone in the crowd asked about a bus. This would be the “Mo-Pho” bus, a project from Randall and his partner in life and art, Teresa Joseph. Short for “Mobile Photography,” the Mo-Pho bus is a double-decker bus Randall and Joseph are renovating to turn into a photography-themed event space on wheels. When it’s done, Joseph said, she hopes the bus will feel like an ice cream truck for adults, complete with its own jingle: “P.I.M.P.” by 50 Cent.
The couple got their bus from a man in Utah who has since moved to Tanzania, Jerry Dolejs of Double Decker Imports. By chance, Dolejs happened to be in the area to attend Randall’s show opening. “Define ‘in the area,’” Joseph remembers saying, “because you’re in Africa.”
As with other moments in Randall’s career, magic, luck, and friendship seemed to coincide. Dolejs was selling another double decker bus nearby, and he showed up to City Hall to celebrate Randall’s work. Randall gave him a shout-out, celebrating how far Dolejs came to be in attendance.
Randall made sure to also thank Joseph, who helped set up the show and added touches like fun flyers advertising mugs and prints.
“I’m a stickler for presentation,” Joseph told me after the Q&A. Other self-descriptions: “a collector,” and a “multi-medium” artist — emphasis on the -um, as opposed to -a, a wording highlighting Joseph’s role as a medium, “like a channel.”
So what does Joseph collect? “Signs, wonders, life lessons,” she said. And people, with the aim of giving them access to what she has. She spends her time curating her photography space where people feel free to be their full selves, “monsters welcome.”
Joseph and Randall work together on creative projects that enchant them both, dressing up in costumes for photoshoots around the city and diving into large-scale projects like renovating a double decker bus. “Treasure is always buried,” Joseph said. She seemed determined to find it.
“I think with that, I’m really done,” Randall said after he thanked his partner, starting to get bashful. The crowd didn’t listen; now it was their turn to thank him.
Dee Marshall, an educator at Hill Central School, took a moment to give Chris Randall her public appreciation for his 2013 work with the Inside Out project, a photography and wheatpasting endeavor posting New Haven residents’ faces on underpasses throughout the city.
Marshall remembers taking her eighth graders down to City Hall for a field trip. “They said, ‘We can’t afford any trips.’ So guess what we did? We walked,” she said. On the way, the students started noticing and counting the wheatpasted faces they saw. The effect, according to Marshall, was “very inspiring.”
Others in the crowd chimed in with their appreciation for some of Randall’s best hits over his past decade-and-a-half showcasing New Haven’s unique beauty.
Finally, in a lull, a friend in the crowd thanked Randall for his time and started a round of applause. To keep up with Randall’s next moves, you might want to keep an eye on the open skies.
