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Trajectory

An English artist often residing and working in Barcelona, Collins studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London between 1974 and 1978, beginning her exhibition career with large-scale black-and-white photographs of landscapes and interiors, still-lifes and figures, always in highly detailed black-and-white. Among these first images, most outstanding are the scenes in which the artist seems to reconcile a meticulous objectivity with an inexpressibly disturbing aroma: such is the case of the still-lifes with oysters and the youngsters with hair so long it covers their entire bodies.

The monumentality of her images, printed on cotton and hung directly on the gallery wall, imply a physical experience on the part of the spectator, whose body appears included in the image, in addition to questioning the representative value of photography; while the simplicity of the motifs represented leads to the suspicion that they embody a dense symbolic or metaphorical content.

In 1978-79 she was awarded a Fullbright-Hays Scholarship in the United States and in 1991, she won the European Photography Prize. Hannah Collins has exhibited frequently in Europe and the United States, in galleries as well as public institutions and museums, such as the Tate and Victoria and Albert museums of London, the Reina Sofía Centre in Madrid, the Walker Art Center of Minneapolis and the Koldo Mitxelena Kulturenea of San Sebastian (Spain). She was a finalist in the Turner Prize 1993. Collins lives between Barcelona, London and San Diego, where she teaches creative photography at the University of California at Davis.

Since her first series, such as The Hunter's Space, in which she reflected upon the situation of regions such as Silesia, Poland after the fall of the Berlin Wall, or Signs of Life, in which she depicted the living conditions of emigrants from East to West, toward Istanbul, or In the Course of Time, in which she returned to regions such as Poland after the fall of communism, Hannah Collins' photographic work is postulated as a reflection on the passage of time, the traces history leaves on people, objects and landscapes. In a panoramic format reminiscent of the silver screen, the subtle and finely honed grey scales of her prints on linen recall the cinematographic tale. And as if they were documentaries, Collins' pictures allude to the idea of news. F. J. S. M.