Chris O’Connell’s psychedelic vision: Park City’s newest gallery pushes the boundaries of photography

The Chris O'Connell Gallery, featuring fine art photography, brings a psychedelic vision to large format landscapes. The gallery is located on Park Ave. Photo: courtesy O’Connell Gallery

PARK CITY, Utah—The moment you step into Chris O’Connell’s newly opened gallery, something shifts. The walls are lined with landscapes that feel both familiar and foreign—forests seem to swirl with movement, trees bend in ways the eye doesn’t expect, and light filters through leaves like it’s alive. It’s photography, yet it isn’t. It’s something more.

“I tell people right away—these are single photographic exposures,” O’Connell says with a smile, watching another group of visitors puzzle over the images. “I don’t use Photoshop to create these.”

O’Connell, a Park City resident, is best known as the co-founder of Armada Skis, a company that revolutionized freeskiing. But after years spent capturing skiers carving through backcountry powder, his career took a sharp turn. Following the tragic loss of his best friend and business partner, legendary skier JP Auclair, in an avalanche ten years ago, O’Connell found himself questioning everything. His job, his art, even his purpose.

 

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That’s when he turned to psilocybin.

“Psilocybin, for me, is about healing trauma,” he explains. “I’ve lost so many friends and colleagues in the mountains—probably twenty people I’ve worked with directly. After JP died, I started spiraling. I tried everything—pharmaceuticals, therapy—but it wasn’t until I started researching psychedelics that I felt like I was really addressing the root of it.”

It was during this personal journey that inspiration struck.

“I was out in the forest, looking at these trees, and something just came to me,” he says. “It was one of those moments that happen maybe a few times in your life—where you know you’re onto something.”

O’Connell began experimenting with a technique that involves moving the camera during a long exposure, capturing both the stillness and motion of a landscape in a single shot. The result? His signature “Psiloscapes”—a fusion of landscape photography and the altered perception psilocybin can induce. The name itself is a nod to both his process and his experience: ‘Psil’ for psilocybin, and ‘scapes’ for landscapes.

One of his favorite pieces, a striking image from the Anaga Rainforest in northern Tenerife, almost didn’t make it to print. “It was a super windy, rainy day, and I wasn’t happy with all the movement in the upper canopy,” he recalls. “But my printer—who works with some of the greatest landscape photographers in the country—told me, ‘No, you have to print this. The movement is what makes it.’ And now, I love it. There’s this beautiful contrast between the still moss and the chaos of the wind.”

Another standout piece—what O’Connell calls “one of my greatest shots of the year”—came by accident. Expecting to miss the perfect light, he arrived late to Guardsman Pass one morning, only to find an ethereal scene waiting for him. “There was this little gap in the trees, and the sun was just blasting through. The aspens were glowing orange and yellow—it looked like a portal.”

In addition to his Psiloscapes, O’Connell has a collection of work dedicated to trees and landscapes covered in frost and rhime ice, which only forms under very particular  weather conditions and coats trees in frosty white ice that looks magical in the right light.

The public’s response to his work has been overwhelmingly positive. “Most people walk in, assume they’re looking at paintings, and then they realize—wait, this is photography,” O’Connell says. “I love watching that moment when it clicks.”

O’Connell’s deep connection to Park City is another important piece of his story. A father of three, he’s an active participant in the community, serving on the Open Space Advisory Committee. His gallery, Park City’s newest, is a testament not just to his artistic evolution, but to his rebirth as a person.

“It’s cheesy to say it’s a rebirth,” he laughs. “But honestly, it is. This is Chris O’Connell 3.0.”

With a career that’s spanned action sports, photography, and now fine art, O’Connell continues to push boundaries. His gallery, much like his journey, is an invitation—to see the world differently, to embrace movement, and to find stillness in chaos.

The O’Connell Gallery is located at 670 Park Avenue and is open from 1-7 p.m. daily.