The Town Summerlin Magazine | Eye in The Sky
Written by Melinda Sheckells
It is not fear that drives him-he has never been afraid of heights-but something closer to transcendence. His camera lens has peered down from the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, across the crown of the Empire State Building and over the outstretched arms of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro. The images he brings back are not just records of daring; they are portals into resilience and redemption. This fall, Las Vegas will see that vision up close.
FAS44, Michael Frey's Freyboy Art Salon, is bringing Wright to the desert for his first Las Vegas photo exhibition, "Coming Home," on view from Sept. 18 through Oct. 25. Sixteen large-scale photographs, each distilled from years of searching and scaling, will fill the gallery. The collection, in partnership with New York's Robert Mann Gallery in New York City, offers an invitation into the artist's paradoxical world where danger and serenity hang in the balance, where risk becomes meditation and where survival itself becomes art.
Wright's trajectory is a story almost too improbable for fiction. A U.S. Army veteran, he began urban exploring as a way to cope with displacement, PTSD and bipolar disorder. Climbing became a form of release, his body and camera entwined in a practice that was both spiritual and artistic. The photos he took while mounting massive structures drew attention, but with the notoriety also came with consequences. An arrest followed. In 2020, when he was on his way to Las Vegas to shoot, he was instead taken into custody. What followed was a legal battle that nearly consumed him, with charges so severe they threatened decades of imprisonment.
In the crucible of incarceration, Wright kept writing. On inmate request forms, in notebooks, on scraps of paper, he scribbled fragments that would later become the foundation of his first photo book, "It Was Never Dark." The title itself is an allegory, born from his experience of a jail cell that was never truly dark. The fluorescent bulb that never switched off, that intrusive light, in time became a source of strength. "It bothered me until I learned how to use it," he says. "It was never truly dark, because I always had this light on the inside." Published this year, the self-produced coffee table book combines six years of photographs with raw, handwritten passages.
Now, as he prepares for Las Vegas, Wright describes his work less as art than as spiritual practice. "I take fewer images now, but more intentional ones," he says. "Each photograph is a timestamp, a version of myself alive in that moment. The work forced me to embody what it was teaching me: to live beyond self-preservation, to be a vessel.
Among the photographs in "Coming Home" are works already gaining iconic status. "Face to Face," taken from the shoulder of Christ the Redeemer, is one of Wright's favorites. "Empire State of Mind" memorializes the climb that led to another arrest at his opening night reception at Robert Mann Gallery in New York City earlier this year. Another, "And When We Die, It Will Feel Like This," shot from the Deer Isle Bridge in Maine, shrouded in fog, radiates warmth and transcendence. "I don't believe in death," Wright says. "When it's all said and done, I think we go back into a pool of light. My work tries to reflect that."
For Michael Frey, founder of FAS44, the ability to bring Wright's work to Las Vegas in collaboration with a major New York City gallery marks a turning point. Frey has collected fine art photography for more than three decades, assembling over 100 works. When he opened FAS44 three years ago, he wanted to introduce Las Vegas to fine art photography beyond the glossy, oversized images that line Strip hotel corridors. "I wanted to raise the cultural level and show people what photography really is," he says. The salon hosts exhibitions with renowned names such as Cig Harvey, Roger Deakins and Jane Hilton and partners with local nonprofits.
Frey first encountered Wright's work at the AIPAD Photography Show in New York. At Robert Mann's booth, he stopped at an image of dangling legs over Central Park South. "I said, 'Oh my God, who is this?" he recalls. "Robert told me it was Drift, and I thought, 'this is amazing. People in Vegas will get this."
The collaboration grew naturally. Frey visited Wright's New York studio and was struck not just by the daring of the photos, but by the story behind them. "He's just such a cool guy," Frey says. "He has this incredible trajectory. People used to want to put him in jail for climbing buildings, and now they're calling him to climb their buildings for commissions."
Wright's process is meticulous. He scouts and waits for the right weather, the right fog and the right light. He works with drones, GoPros and a Nikon Z7 II, but also with his own body as part of the frame. His feet often dangle into the photograph, not as a stunt, but as a reminder of human presence against the immensity of a cityscape. In recent years, those feet have been clad in Nike Dunks, a tribute to his younger brother, who died by suicide. Wright has turned the shoes into an ongoing global series, each pair carefully color-coordinated to the building or bridge he scales. He imagines one day displaying them alongside the photographs.
Las Vegas, for Wright, carries its own resonance. It was the destination he never reached in 2020, the city he was driving toward when he was arrested. Returning now feels less like a debut than a fulfillment. "I named the show "Coming Home" because this period has felt very much like a homecoming for me," he says. "Despite everything, I had to rebuild, to heal. Now I feel fully integrated as a human being. All the parts of myself are finally working together. That's what this show represents."
Frey believes Las Vegas is ready. He has long argued that the city's cultural life begs for extension beyond nightclubs and sports arenas. "I've known people for 20, 30, 40 years, and I have to beg them to come [to my shows]," he admits. "They'll fly thousands of miles to see the Louvre, but won't drive 20 minutes. It's not about supporting me-it's about showing artists that Vegas is a serious city. Otherwise we stagnate culturally.”
But for those who do come, the experience promises to be electric. Wright's images channel the forbidden and the sublime. Standing before them, one feels both the danger of the void and the serenity of surrender. It is a balance Wright knows intimately. "My work taught me to live beyond self-preservation," he says. "It's about love and expansion. Even when I was facing 50 years in prison, I believed in the light. And the light always wins."
