Original fine art contemporary photography by photographic artist Lynne Collins.
Lynne Collins CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTIST 

Statement of work

Lynne Collins began her career as a sculptor and painter. As a child, Collins became acquainted with the TV & film industry through her parents. For more than 25 years, she has worked as an artist in this field, and her credits include creating models and sculptures for film sets and BBC productions. This influence comes through in her photographic works. The artfully arranged, emotionally charged interiors as in the series "The Trespasser" and "On The Edge of Perception" remind us of film sets, bringing the locations and their histories to life in the viewer's imagination.
Lynne Collins' photography is characterized by a meticulous research, a passion for adventure and the desire to create a narrative. She is a self taught photographic artist.
Lynnes work is in many private collections world wide.


On The Edge of Perception
Influenced by her background in painting Collins goes to great lengths to photograph all the images she needs to create her painterly montages.
Derelict decaying mental institutions and industrial buildings are transformed into places of surreal beauty with carefully chosen, topographically fitting, woodland photographs, all taken to replicate the conditions she found in the abandoned buildings.
These environments exist only in Collins mind. They are meant to confuse and have a message that questions our impartiality with our natural environment. Collins narrative is full of hope for the future of the natural environment, suggesting the need for all human life to nurture nature and learn that to cohabit rather than eliminate could be beneficial to all. The mature trees are representational of nature's strength and ability to quickly rejuvenate abandoned buildings or ugly waste lands.

The Trespasser
In preparation for this series Collins explored abandoned buildings, mainly mental asylums in South East London and delved deep into 17th century Dutch painting, which served as the template for her still life's. With these images, she reveals the beauty of transience, while combining the traditional still life genre with urban exploration. While these elements ostensibly contrast one other, Collins implements them in such a way as to break through the melancholy atmosphere of the abandoned locations, breathing new life into them and a unique aesthetic tension.

Creating the still life images in her studio, Collins brings them into a dialogue with the abandoned interiors through photomontage. Her masterly control over the lighting ensures the painterly appearance, reminiscent of the Dutch masters and gives a ghostly atmosphere to her photographs.

Being politically motivated and amid worldwide environmental concerns Collins seeks to offer a commentary on modern life as one of over-consumption and wastefulness. This series was shortlisted for an Arts Foundation fellowship in the Still life category.




The video of Collins below was filmed and edited by Michael Walter at Troika Editions.

 

Lynne Collins - The Trespasser from Michael Walter on Vimeo. http://www.lynne-collins.com/reviews.htm

London Independent Photographers have showcased Lynne and her work on The Trespasser series.

http://www.londonphotography.org.uk/showcase/2011/06/lynne-collins/

Some of Lynne's Trespasser images can be purchased from LUMAS galleries and online.

Allotment Stories
Collins seeks to express the voyage of continual experimentation, ingenuity and perhaps most of all pride, involved in the growing year of the organic vegetable grower.

The series has a humorous side, where Collins raises the status of what we see now, as the humble vegetable, elevated to a spot lit stage.

On the more serious side, climate change, the threat of genetically modified food, loss of habitats and bee numbers declining, the importance of the organic vegetable could be elevated above that of gold, as when all else fails, in the future, vegetables could be the most valuable and precious commodity.

This series was shortlisted for an Arts Foundation fellowship in the Still life category.

 

Memories and Dreams
The images in this series represent elements of memory taken during a walking trip in the Peak District National Park. Layered together they represent Collins final picture of place. They are colourised from memory.
The photographic image seeks to remain just that, a photographic image. Collins wants to push the boundaries of photography, playing with its stabilized structure to gain more freedom of expression.
This series is the result. It might not be considered photography by some. Lynne confesses "I' use the camera as I would a paint brush and canvass for I am an artist with a camera more than I consider myself to be a photographer".

75 Minutes
300 minutes of changing light to sun down, shot at 5 minute intervals on the Seven Sisters cliff at Birling Gap on the Sussex Coast. Each image records 75 minutes of changing light with the camera in the same position through out.

Burnt Rooms
Burnt Rooms is about a personal fear. As a small child of four Collins Saw the flames from a chip pan reach the ceiling. At the age of seven the hall of her boarding school set alight by an old upright paraffin heater, knocked over by running children, the whole of the floor was alight and in flames in seconds.
None of the rooms photographed are in any way personal to Collins but the fear is exorcized by the visit to sites that have almost burnt to the ground and a certain beauty has been found in the remnants of burnt timbers.

Eye of The Beholder
Were ever we live, home is a sanctuary from the cold, a place to store our most loved possessions. A place to hide and a place to rest. A place that offers protection from outside. Size or location can be forgotten once we are inside where privacy and comfort are all that matters.

Communities are often stronger when the homes are poor or placed within sight of industrial complexes or power stations. Community life can be more important than location.
I have noticed that in the areas where these images were taken the community is exceptionally strong, tight and happy.

This series is ongoing......

Future, Climate Change
So many of Lynne Collins images refer to the environmental responses of the planet to human greed, manipulation, multinational companies and the more destructive use of technology.
The shot consists of two images one taken from the top of St Pauls Cathedral. The other, from the top of the seven sisters cliffs on the Sussex Coast, where her partner swam in a winter sea for her art. This image was then superimposed and worked into the Thames view which overlooks the Millennium Bridge and Tate Modern.

As the ice caps melt due to climate change, this is the kind of view we might expect to see in London if governments of the world don't unite and act now.

This is Collins own view of a possible future for London and as with so many of her images she is creating a narrative and sending out a message.

Dystopia
Collins traveled hundreds of miles of motorway in search of access to photograph the required views to create this image. All the shots that make up this one image have been taken from bridges that span the motorway taking weeks to capture. The end product is Collins own rather dark view of the future, The resulting image envisages disappearing countryside in Southern England if road building and widening schemes continue at the present rate. Created at a time of depression for Collins she shows fear and concern about the rush to cover our beautiful land in tarmac.

This is Collins own view of a possible future for the United Kingdom and as with so many of her images she is creating a narrative and sending out a message.

Future: Screens
Many of Lynne Collins images refer to the environmental responses of the planet to human greed, multinational manipulation, wealth and the more destructive use of technology which could supersede it's planet saving benifits. For Collins our future seems pretty grim Saying "while we sit comfortably in our homes viewing our beautiful planet, and friends on screens, multinational companies are out there destroying all that we hold dear". She questions "Are we becoming too happy with a screen image"? If we are not careful that could be all we are left with. She also believes that while we pay so much attention to our screens we fail to see what is happening even in our own confines.

Fragile Structures
Black and white image, digitally hand painted.
The sheds on the Dungeness spit have been lost to the elements in the violent storms that hit the UK in 2013 and 2014. The majority of these images were taken before the storms destroyed them. Only a very few remain in an unstable condition. Collins was intrigued at their ability to remain standing for so many years in such an exposed area. She loved their solitude under such immense skies and was imediately charmed by these little buildings, put together with anything the owner could find.

Now and Then
When Collins was photographing the abandoned mental asylum for The Trespasser series she decided to research it's history. A trip to the library to view all the files from the entire life of the asylum, which were piled almost ceiling high on a massive table, lead her to finding several photographs of the Cane Hill asylum in it's hey day. Collins was obviously not allowed to have the original images but was able to photocopy them. She then photographed the exact rooms in the abandoned hospital in order to blend the photocopied images with her images to produce a ghostly record of it's past.
Collins image was taken in 2008 but the series as it is now was not completed and shown till 2012 after the asylum was demolished.
All the original photocopied old images of Cain Hill were taken at different periods of its history from 1882 to 1950.

All other images on this site are for sale from the artist. Email



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