Benighted, 18 x 15 inches
The Presentation, 20 x 12 inches
Hinman Jackass, 20 x 14 inches
James Collins by Mike Hendrickson
JAMES COLLINS
Irasburg, in the North East Kingdom, VERMONT, USA
I was schooled in picture-taking by Ben Lifson at Cal Arts in the early 1970s. At that time there seemed to be a struggle between the 'Family Of Man' photographers and those championing the artful documentation of empty parking lots. Lifson studied and taught all approaches to photography but championed the human and 'literary' ones that take time to discover and to return to. "When you make demands on reality, sometimes you have to wait," he was known to say.
Additional schooling in architecture, a degree in literature and Peace Corps Ecuador gave me ideas about habitat, humor and humanity that influence my pictures; the absurdist movements in art and literature have informed my work quite a bit, and this is proving helpful in understanding the flood of images washing over us now that everyone has a camera in his or her pocket.
Friends and I started a commune in Vermont after escaping our educational institutions. Several years photo-documenting hippy adventures, post-and-beam building projects, maple sugaring and gardening, as well as the winter trips to Latin America followed.
After a few years of living outside Charlotte, there making documentary photos funded by North Carolina arts grants, a move to central Massachusetts resulted in a quarter-century run as a staff photographer at Worcester's metro daily, the Telegram and Gazette, shooting entertainment, sports, general assignments, crime and features. There were excellent chunks of fuel for photo art, I found, that turned up often enough among the clinkers.
Now free from the daily news image-gathering, it's 'shoot whatever commands the attention, mostly in Canadian border Vermont, a little in central Massachusetts, and in Latin America, where some family members live. Currently interested in the different responses a single image gets today compared to an image from a half-century ago, I still value what Eudora Welty had to say about the process: "A good snapshot keeps a moment that's gone from running away."
“James Owen Collins Is A Native Champlain Valley Vermonter Who Studied Architecture And Literature At A Couple Of Schools Before Studying Photography At The California Institute Of The Arts In Its First Year Of Existence. He Has Been Making Photo Art For Several Decades, Winning A Number Of Awards And Losing Thousands.
Collins Was A Staff News Photographer At A Massachusetts Metro Daily For Two Decades And Has Spent A Lot Of Time And An Embarrassing Sum Of Money Traveling With Cameras To Curious Sites Near Home And In Far-Flung Locations. He Is From The School Of Thought That Says Photographs Are Visual Metaphors.”