Charles Collins has lived in the United States, Japan, England, France, and Mexico. His work has taken him to numerous countries on various assignments including Mexico, to cover former President Salinas de' Gortari.
In 2009 the Crawford Center Gallery in Newton Square, Pennsylvania exhibited a retrospective of his work. Mr. Collins worked as a production designer with numerous theater and dance companies, including the late Anna Sokolov on Steps of Silence. He was the resident lighting designer for the firehouse Theater in Portland, Oregon, and a member of the International
Alliance of Theatrical Stagehands. Mr. Collins taught theater and photography at the Episcopal Academy in Newton Square, Pennsylvania and theater and film production at Ramapo College in New Jersey and theater at Brooklyn College.
The street anchors me. I watch look and listen and have no collaborators or commitments. Only fleeting moments are captured for review and masked in a veil of secrecy. The camera does not lie but neither does it tell the whole story. Something or someone catches my eye: a life well lived,
a thousand unknown lovers, and all the gypo juicers. I am an addict of the street. Someone who gets his fix from the constant movement played out in a hundred different cities across five continents. The work is frenetic, but it also shows me down and leaves me breathless. I seek out the gesture. That
split second frozen in two-dimensional time. The digital age has replaced mystery and anticipation with instant gratification. We are consumed by the immediate. I cherish old ways of mystery and anticipation played out in the darkroom where the immediacy of the moment is slowly revealed.
