Artist Statement | Hannah Collins

Thin Protective Coverings is a key work from the very beginning of my artistic journey. I trained as a painter, but by the mid-1980s, when I was in my late twenties, I had begun to create environments that directly reflected my experiences in my studio in London’s East End. I used a large-format camera to make detailed images that related to my own lifestyle and the scale of the human body. I saw my work as akin to history painting—I was describing a particular period I was part of by creating constructed environments. The scale of my work reflected the grand history paintings I had seen in museums, although the content was a radical reversal, as I was trying to describe the margins rather than the center of society. For me, photography served several purposes: as preparation and reflection, as documentation, and as a record of the temporary places I was making.

I think of myself more as a sculptor and poet than a photographer or a painter.

At the time, life in Britain seemed quite gray. Large areas of the East End were home to young people with very little money and few opportunities. The art scene was limited, with few commercial galleries or alternative spaces. Punk culture and music were prevalent. Although the East End is only five miles from the City of London (Britain’s financial center), it could not have been more different. My studio was in a dilapidated building occupied by about twenty artists. Apart from a thriving Caribbean club that was only open after midnight on Saturdays, the neighborhood seemed as empty as a desert, a combination of the harsh poverty of East London and the alternative lifestyle of the 1970s.

I collected materials I found lying around in the streets. Cardboard boxes and plastic packaging piled up on the floor of my studio. I transformed them into flat surfaces by photographing them together. My pictures contained less and less until I was left with nothing but cardboard. As darkness fell, I saw piles of cardboard carefully left out for homeless people. I reflected these observations in my studio constructions. The arrangements I made seemed endless, as if they continued beyond the edge of the picture. The cardboard was a protective shell.

I carefully lit these images, photographing, developing and printing them in my one room. My studio became a large temporary darkroom each time I made a print. The final work was like a performance that required a huge effort. I was physically involved in the work as I made it, hanging paper in the dark, adding words as I exposed the paper, finding ways to develop the rolls of paper by hand. Each image took several nights to make.

For me, these images represented an alternative place, reflecting a temporary occupation of a world filled with unstoppable forces. Globalization had not yet been talked about, the environment was not as threatened as it is today, and climate change was invisible—without being explicit, this work speaks to the experience of these things.