Family album
Rising star Petra Collins turns the lens on her own family for first hometown show
In the midst of her whirlwind rise as a coveted photographer and curator in New York, Petra Collins just brought things down to earth back home.
Since leaving Toronto with two bags of negatives and a couple hundred bucks four years ago, the 24-year-old has modelled and shot for Gucci, devised intimate photo spreads of Selena Gomez and Kim Kardashian, directed a music video for Carly Rae Jepsen, published two books and established herself with half-a-million followers on Instagram.
Back now with her first solo show on Canadian soil, Collins gets ultra-personal with Pacifier, a peek at her family life and upbringing, featuring shots of her parents, sister, cousins and friends, as well as a mural of her childhood home in North York. It’s a featured exhibition at the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival, on until June 24.
“For me, home isn’t like a place; it’s more the people that I’m with,” Collins said in an interview at the opening of the exhibition here last weekend. The New York-based artist still feels at home in Toronto, where her mother, father and sister live.
But she also feels deep ties to her mother’s roots in Budapest, Hungary, where many relatives reside. Those two locations are where the images from her latest show were shot.
Collins’s father is British-Canadian and her mother is a Hungarian refugee. Her younger sister, Anna, who is doing the joint teacher training program at Canada’s National Ballet School, is a face that is surely wellknown to those familiar with her older sister’s work.
Before Collins was a photographer, she, like her sister, was a dancer. As someone who struggled with reading and writing growing up, she launched herself into movement as a way to express her feelings.
While in high school, she dislocated her knee and was told by her doctors to stop dancing.
“As a young girl, you already have so many insecurities about your body, but to physically not be able to do something you love and that you think you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life . . . was so scary for me,” she says. “It really changed a lot.” Then she picked up a camera. When trying to explain her life, Collins stumbled a bit in her own thoughts, admittedly exhausted from her non-stop schedule.
“What is the opposite of permanent?” she asked, thinking out loud. Photography became a way for her to capture and keep feelings that might otherwise slip away. “I’m sort of, like, always scared of losing everything.”
In her early 20s, she figured the time was right to make a move to pursue her art. After consulting with her parents, she dropped out of classes at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
“I basically packed two suitcases of negatives and I left,” Collins said.
Her father, Ian Collins, said she did this without a safety net, not asking for a dime. He takes some credit for giving her confidence.
“The thing with Petra is that everybody found her,” he said. “She does her art.”
Collins’s parents and younger sister were at the packed and sweaty opening of the Toronto show last Saturday, a gathering that in many ways felt more like a big family reunion.
It was hard to speak with any of them without being interrupted by a hug or hello from friends. Meanwhile, fans flocked towards the family’s eldest hoping for a photo and an autograph.
Something about the experience seemed almost therapeutic for the Collins family. When speaking to the Star in separate interviews, both parents and Collins’s sister brought up difficult times from their past. For them, their former home on the wall served as a reminder of both good and bad memories.
“It feels full circle in a way; it’s a really nice feeling,” Anna Collins said. “And our family is in a really good place right now, so it’s nice.”
Collins’s work is close-up, powerful and feminine, but hasn’t come without controversy. An American Apparel T-shirt depicting a drawing of a menstruating vagina and an Instagram photo of her own unshaven bikini line both stirred up a fuss.
Looking back, Collins remembers joining American photographer Ryan McGinley on one of his legendary creative road trips. That experience helped make her brave, she said.
“I guess I had to do everything that scared me and after that I wasn’t scared of anything.”
Humble, yet aware of her massive following, Collins wants people who follow her to know that her life is not perfect or unattainable.
Treading carefully with how she addresses it, Collins said being taken seriously as young woman in her role still isn’t easy. Pointing to a time when an assistant congratulated her on doing a good job, she said she often gets comments from people on sets that she doesn’t think would be made to a man in the same role.
“It’s like, did you not think I was going to do a good job?” asked the artist, who has a long list of big-name clients and a decade of professional experience to her credit.
“It’s hard to be taken seriously and to be myself at the same time,” Collins said. “(People) want a boss, or whatever, someone in charge to be one certain way — and I don’t really fit into that box.” In the face of those who doubt her, she said a combination of persistence and confidence has helped her move forward.
Darcy Killeen, executive director of the Contact festival, said organizers wanted a Canadian artist they could invest in as a headliner.
“Seeing an immensely talented young female artist at the height of the beginning of her career is very rewarding and we’re thrilled to see what’s next for Petra’s artistic journey,” she said.
Collins’s next endeavour is to venture into filmmaking, which is not to say she’ll ever abandon her signature practice of shooting 35-mm stills. She also has a new book in the works, a project she hopes can mark a turning point in her life: wrapping up her coming of age and moving ahead to . . . something else.
But for now, she calls the timing of her hometown show serendipitous.
“The work is so personal and so based in Toronto and based in my growth that it was kind of just perfect,” she said. “It’s special because it’s me being able to (say), ‘this is what’s happened to me.’ ” Pacifier is showing at the Contact Gallery, 80 Spadina Ave., Suite 205, until June 24. The show is open Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m.