JOHN F. COLLINS, Panatomic, c. 1935, 9.5x7.625" Gelatin silver print, Printed c. 1935, Gallery number inscribed in pencil on mount verso.

Photographer and filmmaker John Collins, who lived to the age of 103, began to photograph in 1904. Here he has made a brilliant Modernist abstraction.

John F. Collins's (1888-1991) career as an advertising photographer, whose work can be legitimately called art photography, began at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. Seeking adventure, he had left his native Ohio and traveled to the fair, where he found work pulling visitors around on rolling wicker chairs. Touring the grounds, he came upon a primitive photo booth, was fascinated by the whole process of photography, quit his job, and went to work for the man in charge of the booth. Collins soon bought himself a Brownie camera and began to travel throughout the United States, taking photographs and living on odd jobs. He returned to Ohio and was hired to make newsreels. One of his newsreels evolved into a political film - the first commercial, perhaps, for electioneering purposes - which was ultimately instrumental in electing the film's subject, Ohio representative Frank Hunter, to office.

In 1915 Collins moved to Florida, where the early movie industry was located, to work as a cameraman. In 1916 he came to New York, where he was successful in convincing advertising agencies to use his creative photographs to sell products ranging from face creams to real estate. When World War I broke out, Collins went overseas as a war photographer, capturing images of President Woodrow Wilson and General John J. Pershing, among others. After the war he lived in Syracuse, New York, where his photography came to the attention of a representative of Eastman Kodak. He was soon hired by Kodak, and he remained there as an in-house catalogue and special assignment photographer.

An artist by anyone's definition, Collins saw himself simply as a craftsman with the camera as his tool. "Let the art boys have their way if they want to call it an art. To me, it's a tool, a means of communication and education", he said in an interview on the eve of his 100th birthday.

CREDIT: Howard Greenberg Gallery

Very Good. Mild wear. Mount minor wear.