Bio

Collin Riggins is a B&W analog photographer and conceptual artist from Kansas City, Missouri. He received a BA in African American Studies and Visual Arts from Princeton University. Collin developed an interest in photography as a teenager when he participated in a free high school photography program at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. That moment fundamentally changed everything, inspiring Collin to not only develop his own unique photographic practice, but also champion accessibility and learning throughout that process. Today, Collin seeks to create socially engaged images that capture the intimacy, interiority, and wonder of black living. He often leans into the personal, chasing familial histories, geographies, and people that define his African American heritage. Although Collin sees himself working within the tradition of documentary photography, he is always trying to challenge the genre’s aesthetics to more faithfully carry the complexity (and abundant beauty) of vernacular culture. In short, Collin doesn’t shy away from contradiction. He embraces it as a fertile starting point to get somewhere closer to truth – if such a thing exists.

What I’m currently up to

I recently finished teaching analogue photography through an initiative called IMAG(in)E, a free six-week program for high schoolers in The Bronx that I co-created alongside my friend and visual artist Max Diallo Jakobsen. I recently finished helping out filmmaker and friend Josh Begley on an 18-channel film installation that premiered in the Edges of Ailey show at The Whitney. I am currently a fellow at Magnum Foundation, the inaugural artist-in-residence at Art on the Block NYC, and continuing my body of work in the South, entitled Cotton Stains.

I’m also just having a lot of fun, learning and feeling as I find my space in the photography universe and develop a mode of documentation that is uniquely my own.