Chris Faust’s interest in photography began in the sciences with biological insect identification and later as an emergency and operating room clinical photographer for Gillette Children’s Hospital. Faust established a graphic arts and photographic service shop for the University of Minnesota.

After the removal of a benign brain tumor in 1987, Faust decided that there was more to his photographic interests than scientific photography, and he began to pursue his own creative work. A pinhole camera series on children's landscapes led to his first McKnight Fellowship. In 1990, he began a six-year project in seven states documenting suburban growth with landscape architect Frank Martin.

Presently Faust is working on a project about the landscape of the upper Mississippi. His book of night landscapes is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in fall 2006.

Faust’s work is represented in the collections of the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, among others, as well as in corporate and private collections. He has received three McKnight Foundation Fellowships for Photography, a Bush Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, and two Graham Foundation Fellowships. Faust was granted a National Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1993.