Gonzalo del Peon ’13
From New York’s Occupy Wall Street protests to London’s riots this summer, one of Episcopal’s own has been busy capturing change behind a camera lens, using candid street photography to trap the energy of a city in a single moment; that is, when he’s not teaching his students how to do it themselves.
Charles Collins was born in Tacoma, Washington, to a father in the US army and a mother from Barbados. During his childhood, he lived in England, France, and Japan, moving around constantly throughout his youth because of his father’s work. One constant for Collins throughout the moves was photography. He credits his parents, who gave him a camera when he was young, for his early interest in the subject.
Although he had been a life-long photographer, he saw photography as a hobby rather than a career. After college, Collins set up his own production company in New York. There, he focused on set and lighting design and worked on movies, television shows, and commercials. The productions the company managed include the 1992 Al Pacino film Scent of a Woman, The Bill Cosby Show, and various television soap operas, as well as stage productions at regional theaters all over the country. He has also worked on music performances, managing the stage and lighting for artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Buffet.
Collins’s work has garnered critical attention, earning him two awards from the Kennedy Center for production and design, as well as awards from the American Theater Association.
Despite his success in the world of theater production, Collins felt there was more he wanted to do with his career. “Basically, I was just tired. As a production designer I felt I had accomplished all I had to do artistically,” said Collins. “I realized that photography was taking up more and more of my time. So I sold the company and dedicated myself to the photography I love to do.”
Collins began his teaching career at the City University of New York, and taught at other universities before coming to Episcopal as the Head of Technical Theater.
“The photography program at Episcopal had been dormant for a while when I was in the theater department,” said Collins. When the search began for a new photography teacher, Collins’s experience in the field made him a prime candidate for the position. “The program originally only had one photography class, and I kept doing theater design,” said Collins. As the program grew, Collins began to teach photography exclusively.
Collins himself works primarily in black and white, and names mid-century street photographers such as William Klein and Garry Winogrand as influences. Collins draws inspiration from urban environments and has visited over 150 countries, but says he will always be partial to New York, Paris, and London. Throughout his teaching career, Collins has kept up his work as a professional photographer, maintaining a relationship with an agent in Los Angeles and exhibiting his work.
Collins is based in New York City, where his studio is located. His work has been exhibited in New York, as well as in his published photography book, Long Way Home. He has two other photography books currently in the works, although all three barely capture the diverse scope of his pictures. Long Way Home is composed of black and white candid photos from cities all over the world, taken during his thirty year career as a street photographer. His second book, currently in the final stages of editing, is tentatively titled Post Note Bills, and is made up of color photographs of construction sites. The third book is in even earlier stages of development, and focuses on public bus transportation in the city of Santiago, Chile.
Collins’s hands-on experience in the field of professional photography has allowed him to witness first-hand the ways in which digitalization has changed photographic art. “[Digital photography has] brought about instant access, which is a good thing, but it’s taken away a sense of mystery and anticipation. Also, the process is so different, and really requires a different mindset than it used to.”
Collins offers his advice to students interested in photography, whether as a career or as a hobby. “Try and familiarize yourself with painting, drawing, art history, have a broad arts background in general. Technical skills of photography can be taught, but what can’t be taught is a way of seeing, which is how we as an individual look at the world and how we react. It’s a perspective seen in art, film, and photography.”
When asked about the importance of photography in the world, Collins said, “Photography is a tool to understand the world we live in. I see it strictly as a tool. It helps us understand our relationships to one another, and shows us a perspective to see the world.”