Hannah Collins

HANNAH COLLINS (London, 1956).
“Sex 1,” 1991.
Archival silver gelatin print mounted on cotton.
Bibliography: Hannah Collins. Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, May 11–June 13, 1993, Government of Catalonia, Department of Culture, 1993, p. 67 (reproduced).
Measurements: 190 × 240 cm.

A large-format work belonging to a decisive moment in Hannah Collins’s career, “Sex 1” exemplifies how the artist transformed photography into an image of powerful physical and spatial presence in the early 1990s. Created in 1991, the year she received the European Photography Award, the work also predates her nomination for the Turner Prize in 1993.

The composition features a group of open and closed oysters that occupy virtually the entire field of view. The considerable magnification transforms their shapes and textures into an image of intense material presence: the rough surfaces of the shells contrast with the light, moist interiors, while the black-and-white treatment accentuates the opposition between light and shadow, hardness and softness, exterior and interior. The title reinforces the image’s corporeal and sensory dimension. Writer Rebecca Stott analyzed this work specifically, focusing precisely on that tension between the closed and the open, the hard and the soft, and on the historical associations of the oyster with sexuality and desire.

At 240 cm wide, the scale is essential to interpreting the work. The photograph moves beyond a purely contemplative state to take on a presence akin to a mural, shaping the viewer’s physical relationship with the image. This focus on materiality, the medium, and space was fundamental to Collins’s work in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Hannah Collins studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and completed her studies in the United States on a Fulbright scholarship. Between 1989 and 2010, she lived and worked in Barcelona, a period during which she created *Sex 1* and established her international reputation. In 1991, she received the European Photography Award; in 1992, she represented Great Britain at the 3rd Istanbul Biennial; and in 1993, she was nominated for the Turner Prize—the same year the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica in Barcelona dedicated a solo exhibition to her. In 2015, she received the Spectrum International Prize for Photography, accompanied by a retrospective at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. Her work is part of major international collections, including those of the Tate, the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA, the Sprengel Museum, and the Walker Art Center.