Dennis Collins – 60 Years of Photography

Feature Image: Dennis Collins speaking at HD South in Gilbert

In the waning months of 2024, Dennis Collins ended his extensive volunteer work with Art Intersection and its galleries. He also resigned from the Board of Directors of Arizona Photography Alliance, after having been a founding member and active on the board since the group’s inception.

Dennis Collins wanted to devote all his energies to his own art projects, some new, some growing from photographic work started decades ago. He planned to finish his portfolio project, “Memories of a Death,” by the end of the year. The portfolio, comprised of images from his six decades of photography, is a legacy project prepared for the immediate members of his family.

As part of Art Intersection’s “Light Sensitive” exhibition, Alan Fitgerald set aside a display space for a sampling of Collin’s work, both historical and current.

On December 4, Collins spoke to those assembled at HD South in Gilbert about his work and his experiences in photography. He reviewed his first twenty years as a staff photographer at AT&T before his plunge into fine art photography. Annual report, advertising, and editorial photography gave way to creative photography with four years at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, College of Art and Design. Inspired by an 1896 platinum print by Frederick H. Evans, Collins learned platinum printing. At that time, commercially coated platinum paper was still available from the Palladio Company. He had several decades of experience with silver gelatin printing, but after seeing an Edward Weston print in a gallery he began a study of the Zone System. Collins’ last work at CCS and the basis for his thesis show involved carbon printing. The process is a regular practice of only a handful of photographers around the world. His professors suggested he was doomed to fail in choosing carbon printing as the basis for his final thesis. His last semester was filled with failures, but he battled on his own and made his first successful print three weeks before the thesis show was to be mounted. He graduated with honors.

Examples of Collins’ silver gelatin, platinum, cyanotype, and carbon prints can be seen until January 11 within the Light Sensitive exhibit at HD South in Gilbert. The audience there on 4 December had the chance to closely examine several prints from Collins’ extensive archive and to see some of his newest work printed on Pictorico (a translucent medium) and backed by gold leaf. These prints create the feeling of ‘light through’ and add an unusual suggestion of depth to the image. Another special treat for those in attendance at this presentation was a set of CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) separation prints. Prepared on Pictorico film at Art Intersection, the prints demonstrate how carbon print layers come together to create a full color image.

Dennis has been a long-term advocate for women in photography. As a board member, Collins has been responsible for highlighting the practices of several women photographers within AZPA by organizing programs featuring their current work and techniques.

He also praised Nan Goldin’s success in holding the Sackler family responsible for the opioid crisis and halting their whitewashing of the family name with museum contributions. He also recommended the 2024 film “Lee”, that follows pioneering photographer Lee Miller’s work with Vogue and her success in overcoming the obstacles she encountered as a woman trying to document the battlefront of World War II from D-Day to Berlin.

Dennis Collins closed his presentation with some words from William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence;

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour”

I want to extend my personal thanks to Alan Fitzgerald for giving us a chance to explore the photographic background of Dennis Collins, someone who I personally know is never reticent to help or share his knowledge within the photographic community. Dennis is the kind of person that makes Art Intersection and the Arizona Photographic Alliance such valuable resources.