Christian Churches Is Capturing El Paso the Way El Paso Deserves to Be Seen

There is a particular kind of love that only someone who grew up somewhere can have for it. Not the love of a tourist who sees the postcard version, but the love of someone who knows the back alleys and the boarded-up windows and knows that the afternoon sun turns even a crumbling wall into something worth stopping for. Christian Churches has that love for El Paso, and more importantly, he has the talent to make the rest of us see what he sees.

Churches has made a living photographing this city in a way that captures how those of us who love El Paso actually see it. The soft orange glow of the sun as it shines down in glory upon our city. The Star on the Mountain. The steel and glass of a skyline still finding its footing. These are the shots that make Sun City residents stop scrolling. But what sets Churches apart is that he does not stop there.

Every Corner of El Paso Is Worth Knowing

The run-down buildings, the boarded-up windows, the back roads that most El Pasoans pass without a second thought. In his hands, those places carry the same warmth and intention as any shot of the Franklin Mountains at golden hour. To Christian, every aspect of this city is worth knowing and seeing and experiencing, and that includes the people. He isn't the only capturing the dilapidated storefronts or a run down street, but he is one of the few that captures these images with a rose-colored tint. Not because Christian runs from the messy, but because its part of the city and it doesn't get better by ignoring it.

That philosophy is what has made his annual 915 Day video series an event in its own right. Year after year, those videos spread across social media with the kind of organic reach that marketing budgets cannot manufacture, because they hit something genuine. People recognize their city in his work. The real city and what makes it El Paso.

Made In Chuco Puts El Paso's People in the Frame

Churches has now turned that same gaze toward the people who make up those three numbers. His new series, Made In Chuco, is an intimate look at the residents who continue to push forward in this city and make it known past the horizon of our mountain peaks.

The series kicked things off with one of our own Grammy Award-winning musicians, Roger Argenis of Soundstage9. The way Christian captures the city is the way he highlights its residents. That same infatuated glow. That same refusal to make his subject smaller than it is.

The Series El Paso Has Been Waiting For

Made In Chuco feels like a natural extension of everything Churches has been building toward. The artful ways he photographs the city from street to skyscraper, the 915 Day videos that go viral every time he posts them, and now this intimate view of the people who make up those three numbers, 915. His love of our Sun City is present in every project we have seen from him, and it is just as present here.

Who is next? That is the only question worth asking. Christian Churches already knew how to show us where we live. Now he is showing us who we are.

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