Photographer Philip Flip Collier is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘The Boston Years 1972 -1975’. To see Philip’s body of work, click on any photograph.
The first photograph I took that spoke to me is the one titled “Rosie”, Defiance, Ohio 1972. I was at The Defiance College in Defiance, Ohio for one semester in 1972. I picked the school solely because of its name. I was not a particularly good student at this time of my life but something happened there that was the catalyst to my obsession with photography. I had a political science professor who took an interest in me and introduced me to the darkroom at the school. He hired me to take some photographs of a sculpture he had made or bought, I don’t remember the specifics, but they were the first rolls of film that I had ever developed and printed. And though the pictures came out horribly I was intrigued by the process. I loved the solitude of the darkroom. I loved the chemistry and precision that you needed to work in that environment.
I remember the day I took that photograph. I had one roll of film and I went to the park with two friends of mine, Rosie and Sue. It was a cold winter day and they were running through the playground jumping through piles of leaves, over the support where the seesaws used to be, sliding down the slide, spinning on the merry-go-round and me following around trying to capture the merriment of the day, documenting these moments in time…. I didn’t use the whole roll of film, I took about 15 shots at the playground and a few on our way back to the school. I went back to the dorm and finished the roll. The next day I rushed to the darkroom to develop my film and see what I had. I remember the excitement of anticipating what I had captured and seeing the results. I remember looking at my negatives thinking that I had overdeveloped them, I remember printing the first contact sheets and finally a print. When I saw the photograph of “Rosie” I thought, wow this is pretty cool. It was a very soft background and a tender, pensive moment. It didn’t matter that you couldn’t see her whole face, you could feel her ease. It was a beautiful moment, a perfect slice of life instantly frozen in time. I was hooked.
At the end of the semester, I left the school and went back to Boston. I enrolled at the New England School of Photography where I studied for the next two years with the hope of becoming a commercial photographer, but I could never get off the streets. People fascinated me. I loved the way I could capture them in an instant and preserve the moment forever. This is the beginning of my “Boston Years 1972 – 1975”.
Artist Statement I consider my body of work to be proof of our existence; they are slices of my life, tiny moments. Each individual image is an experience I lived and thought to be worthy of capture, full of beauty, strife, angst, and magnificence. I am hoping that one day in the future, that moment will be relived, over and over again. Taken so that future generations could have this window back in time, to savor the moments of the past. From being a part of the political rallies that I attended and meeting the people that I befriended along the way as a young man. To seeing the astonishing mountain scenes and the splendor of the Mediterranean seaside that I have come to call my home in these later years of my life, I have realized that it is not about my life, but about the past. It is the past, that sense of yesterday, and dissipating memory that grows lost as we collectively step forward into a new tomorrow. Time is a turning wheel. It is the flow of a river and it never changes direction. It is certainly a shifting landscape that we live in and as the years roll by, the changes in the world become more evident to the ones who have lived longer. We realize that most of it is now out of our control. These photographs were taken, so you won’t forget where we came from and to record the fleeting instances that will never be again. Those moments in time, that if not for my photographs, may have totally gone unnoticed or forgotten. I eternalized that moment. Artist Biography Philip Collier was born in Boston Massachusetts. He is a Graduate of the New England School of Photography where he studied documentary photography. Influenced by the works of W. Eugene Smith, August Sander, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and many others -- he took to the streets. He started in the streets of Boston recording the local fire departments, Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, The Bicentennial Celebration in Concord, Massachusetts and The Abortion Rights Demonstration in The Boston Commons. In 1975, he moved to NYC where he photographed for the 1980 Democratic Convention , 1984 Summer Olympic Committee, The feast of St. Anthony’s, The Macy’s Day parade and various other street and political events. In 1980 he moved to Newport Beach, California where he started taking sea and landscapes. In 1981, he moved back to Boston where he went to Wentworth Institute of Technology and spent the next 25 years in electronic engineering. He moved to Denver in 1994 and spent 20 years there until he retired in 2014 and moved to Grenoble, France where he rekindled his passion for photography and lives today.
All images and text © Philip Flip Collier
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By Philip Flip Collier
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Thank you!
Loved those photographs. Wish there had been more. They did what the photographer wanted them to do – spoke to me.
Gwen.
These are so pretty amazing pictures. Thank you for sharing with us.
I was born in ’74. Great photos! =)