Christian Holman

The District. “White Myst | Teen Dance | Presented by Monster Energy.” Doors at eight, ages high-school freshman to twenty, ten dollars in advance. Laser show, projection mapping, CO₂ cannons, t-shirt guns, and per the official trailer, over 1,000 attendees.

Christian helped put it together with the Kor Presents crew. When the lineup went out, his business was printed in it, listed alongside the DJs. At twenty years old, in a market of 170,000 people, that is what an arrival looks like.

On November 1, 2014, Christian co-founded Humans of Sioux Falls with Brian Opp, a USD journalism grad who brought him the idea over coffee on 41st Street. Opp with a notebook. Holman with a camera. Modeled on Humans of New York, aimed squarely at a city that didn't think it had stories worth stopping for.

It cleared 2,500 followers in six weeks and settled above 5,300. Every photograph on that page through 2015 is his. He still owns it.

Seven weeks after launch, the Argus Leader ran the project in the Sunday LIFE section. He was twenty, and he already owned a business.

Nine months before the storms, he'd started something of his own. February 13, 2015, the first annual Masquerade Ball at ICON Event Hall, the old John Deere building on North Main, seven hundred capacity. Then 2016. 2017. 2019. 2020.

Five editions, each billed exactly the same way: Masquerade Ball, hosted by Christian Holman. The 2019 edition alone had 491 people RSVP. Show. Sioux Falls would later call them “ICON Lounge's legendary masquerade balls.”

Three weeks before the first ball he photographed Revival Event Series Ep. #1, an EDM night headlined by Manic Focus and Artifakts that sold out ICON Lounge by 10pm.

You don't have to take his word for how those nights felt. A guest filmed one and posted it under the only title it needed: “My friends throw cool parties.”

That is the whole argument for a room. Somebody who paid to get in cared enough to make a record of it.

2016. Forbes published “The Most Expensive Home Listing in Every State.” South Dakota's entry, 940 Quail Hollow Circle in Dakota Dunes, listed at $4.5 million, is a Christian Holman photograph, made for the listing through Century 21 ProLink.

Around the same time he founded DVI-Media: architecture, real estate and commercial imagery, built, in his words, in response to a growing need for quality representation of homes on the market. The client list widened into country clubs, hotels, banks and brands.

Retail came looking too. When Dillard's opened its Sioux Falls store, the department store hired him to cover the grand opening: the ribbon, the executives at the microphone, the balloons, the first customers through the doors. National brands do not hand that job to whoever is nearby.

For years the original business ran underneath all of it. Weddings, seniors and families paid for the equipment and taught him to work fast in rooms he could not control. He stopped taking that work on regularly around 2021, once the commercial and editorial side could carry the calendar on its own.

2020, The Barrel House. An invitation-only chef's dinner for Hungry Hearts, four hundred dollars a plate, cooked by Joe Flamm (Top Chef winner), Joe Sasto (Top Chef finalist), Justin Sutherland (Top Chef, Iron Chef) and Will Carter.

The night raised $50,000 for coats and winter gear for local kids. Christian shot the entire service: the line, the plating, the room. The kind of assignment where you get one pass at every dish and no second service.

KELOLAND coverage → · hungry-hearts.org →

October 14, 2025. JLG Architects published “Elevating the everyday: Turning the office into a destination of choice,” by Tracy Jordre, AIA, LEED AP, and Erica Rapp. Two photographs in it carry the line © Christian Holman, DVI Media – FIBT Sioux Falls.

They illustrate the passage on designing for inspiration: “At First International Bank & Trust in Sioux Falls, tailored workspace elements create an elevated environment grounded in the bank's unique identity.”

May 31, 2025. ICON's Sustainable Fashion Show turned a skate park into a runway at seven in the evening. Ten names on the official lineup: Katie, Hannah, Huey, Soleil, Ellen, Connor, Astrid, Olivia, Christian, Justice.

It wasn't the first time he'd been on the other side of the lens. In 2019 he was the face of a CellOnly × Verizon print campaign, “Spring into picture perfect upgrades,” running in national magazine placement.

Fourteen years of directing people in front of a camera turns out to be excellent preparation for standing in front of one.

August 2025, a goth night at ICON: the debut of GHSTMKR. Two months later The Dakota Scout was previewing The Witching Hour: “dark electronic sounds and eerie rhythms… a creative fusion of beats and visuals that celebrates the art of sound and style.”

Four mixes on YouTube by mid-October. Residency nights at Myrtle's: Harry Potter Night, Day of the Dead, Winter Whiteout. By 2026, a standing Saturday Brunch Club residency at Maribella, written up by SiouxFalls.Business and The Dakota Scout inside three months.

A wedding photographer is a project manager with a shutter. An event producer is an operations person who happens to book DJs. Fifteen years of both is a very specific education: find the bottleneck, build the fix, ship it before Saturday.

So the newest work doesn't look like photography at all. It looks like an AI company, a streetwear label, a CRM practice, and a browser game. All live, all his.