‘Photography is art’s orphan’: Michael Collins on Blind Corners
Blind Corners: Essays on Photography is the debut essay collection by celebrated photographer Michael Collins, the first contemporary art photographer to be exhibited at The British Museum. His work is in the collections of the V&A, the British Library and more. In Blind Corners – a series of linked pieces introduced by Will Self – Collins offers a reappraisal of photographic genres, including the humble and ubiquitous, that he believes are worthy of greater understanding.
In this interview, we discuss his inspiration, the selection process for the photographs featured in the book, and how he hopes readers will approach this underrated artform.
How did you first become interested in photography? What role does it play in your day-to-day life?
I fell into photography by accident, working on magazines, and soon realised, to my amazement, that most people only looked superficially at the photographs. I’ve always been the kind of person who stared at things – sight’s probably my primary sense – and photography is all about the long look. Decades ago, I was the picture editor of the Daily Telegraph’s magazine, which was a great place to learn because while the editors knew a lot about writers, they knew next to nothing about photography – so I was able to work under cover of darkness, although they’d yank on my leash periodically. Inevitably, I outgrew the role (and my usefulness).
My self-assumed mission was to try to present more interesting photography than the usual fare, and the more I learned about it, the more fascinating it seemed, and the more frustrated I felt (and still do) with the way it’s managed. I admit this sounds arrogant, but I’m convinced that photography is far more sensitive and profound than is generally acknowledged.
What inspired you to write Blind Corners, and to whom would you recommend it?
If you say that there are even better possibilities out there, that photography has much more to offer, then some people dismiss you for being too critical, rather than speculating about what you might have in mind. Blind Corners is my paean to photography. I’d long wanted to write a series of essays for a wide-ranging readership, for a public beyond the confines of the photography world, for anyone who had ever looked at a photograph with wonder, heart, and introspection; in other words, for all of us.
Did you select the photographs first, or did the topics come to mind initially? Tell us about the selection process.
Life has a way of presenting you with the dilemmas you need to resolve. The first essay tells the story of a stranger’s kindness, of an old photograph’s negative, and of the life that had lain embedded in it for over half a century. From there, I wrote about giving the gorillas at London Zoo a Hasselblad camera, and the wisdom that emerged from both sides of the camera. One essay follows another, like paths through different lands of photographs, and culminates in a series of heartbreakingly beautiful pictures of a village’s blind corners commissioned by the council. Hopefully the reader comes along for the ride, looking for themselves, making their own mind up.
Who inspires you in your work?
Maybe all art leads to the same space, where something so intensely personal is also so universal.
Specifically regarding photography, would that more nineteenth-century exhibitions were shown here. In Britain, photography remains art’s orphan. I would also love to see photography from more diverse sources, and work that is not crushingly didactic; it suffers from being conscripted into an applied art. The Tate has a new curator, and the V&A has expanded its photography department (and is about to open V&A East), and Autograph and the Photographers Gallery are thriving, so there are promising signs.
I don’t really have a Desert Island book, but Blast Furnaces by Bernd and Hilla Becher is probably photography’s bible.
How do you recommend readers – especially those without a background in photography – approach the book?
Imagine this: think of a photograph which has great personal meaning for you. Maybe a picture of when you were a child. Maybe it was even a picture of you sitting on the lawn in a pink outfit next to your pet rabbit. You can look at the picture ironically, and riff knowingly on all the signifiers. Or, you can drop your knowingness and let the picture into your heart, and absorb yourself in all the mnemonic prompts that riddle the photograph, and from something so seemingly simplistic, allow something profound to emerge.
This state is beyond the sentimental: it’s the sensory alert. No artist could ever hope for a more receptive engagement, no art for a more meaningful embrace.
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