About

Chris Leslie is an award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and director based in Glasgow, Scotland. His practice is primarily concerned with documenting processes of urban transformation and the lived experiences of marginalised individuals, groups, and communities.

Through an engagement with both local and international contexts, Leslie’s work situates itself at the intersection of documentary, social history, and visual anthropology.

Over the course of his career, Leslie has produced extensive visual documentation across Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Africa, and Asia, in addition to his sustained engagement with the city of Glasgow. His photographic essays and written work have appeared in The Guardian, where he continues to examine the evolving social and architectural landscapes of contemporary urban life.

Leslie’s critically acclaimed multimedia project and accompanying publication, Disappearing Glasgow, offers a detailed chronicle of the city’s profound socio-spatial transformations. The project has been widely recognised for its contribution to the visual historiography of Glasgow’s recent past, positioning Leslie as one of its most consistent and insightful chroniclers.

His long-term body of work, A Balkan Journey, constitutes a poignant exploration of post-conflict recovery and reconstruction in the former Yugoslavia. Spanning twenty-five years, the project foregrounds the enduring psychological and physical legacies of war while examining the role of memory, resilience, and collective identity in processes of reconciliation and rebuilding.

Leslie’s photographic work is held in the permanent collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, as well as in various private collections.

As a filmmaker, Leslie’s debut feature-length documentary, Finding Family (2014), was the recipient of two Scottish BAFTAs in the New Talent category and two Golden Apple Awards at the BHFF NYC Festival. Leslie’s current project, The Partisan Necropolis (2025), is conceived as both a feature-length and a television documentary. It investigates the contested heritage of the Partisan Memorial Cemetery in Mostar, tracing the site’s political, cultural, and symbolic significance within contemporary debates on memory, preservation, and identity in post-conflict societies.