COLIN FINLAY is one of the foremost documentary photographers in the world. He has been awarded the prestigious Picture of the Year International (POYi) honor six times.
For more than twenty years, Finlay has documented the human condition with compassion, empathy and dignity. He has covered war and conflict, disappearing traditions, the environment in both its glory and its devastation, genocide, famine, religious pilgrimage and global cultures. In pursuit of his passion, he has circled the globe twenty-seven times, in search of that one photo that will be a testament to the depth of human will and compassion, of hope and of an informed collective consciousness.
His work has been honored by prestigious organizations such as the Lucie Award/IPA, POYi (Picture of the Year International), New York Art Directors, Photo District News (PDN), Applied Arts, International Center for Photography, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
His photographs have been featured in Vanity Fair, TIME, U.S. News and World Report, American Photo, Los Angeles Magazine, Asia Week, World Health Organization, UNICEF, Photographic Magazine, Communication Arts and Discovery.
Currently, Finlay is also a partner/collaborator at Definitive Stories, a partnership that produces and curates stories from around the world, using emerging technologies.
Finlay’s second book “Testify,” is a collection of images from seventeen years of photojournalism around the globe, and was published in 2006.
“Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan,” Finlay’s third book, was published in July 2007, by powerHouse. Co-produced with Proof and Amnesty International, this book brings to light the history of war by eight world-renowned photographers and writers. Established by Finlay, Proof is a non-profit organization established to create awareness on the issues faced by populations in post-conflict societies and to encourage social change through photography.
In 2007, Finlay also premiered 12°N x 23° E, 64°S x 60° E, a photo essay that features contrasts between photographs taken in Sudan and Antarctica. The essay, which is also produced as an art installation book, was curated by Definitive Stories. The book shows cause and effect and allows the viewer to explore and discover their own conclusions on climate change.
She came to be known by me and only me as the flycatcher. I photographed from within, as her soul slowly tore itself from her body. I sat with her in the suffering of her silence. There was no language between us. There never could be. Her name, yes her name. In her open wounds, of which there were many, flies would be drawn. Their tiny legs, swallowed, dragged down into the puss became trapped. The flycatcher would study one wound in particular. It was at the base of her inside right ankle. The place where earlier a three to four foot worm had been dutifully extracted. Although sometimes the parasite simply ate itself out of the body. She harvested from this hole two to three flies a minute. She would carefully capture them, placing one after another into her mouth. She sat alone in the black heat. Nobody came near her. They simply waited. For her next was the devils tail. Inevitable “Inconvenient Truth” I believe Al Gore would call it. This is where her essence would fall from within her. The rectum, the lower bowels, are simply no longer be held by the body, and what was once inside is now out. Death, I wish was quicker.
But now, she lies within me. Folded into my soul, her and the thousands of others. I do not reject. I now accept their souls as one within me. The courage to live with what I’ve seen.
- Colin Finlay
There was a time, when those who came to spawn were the only ones. They were soon followed by the fish who swim as rainbows, those who came to swallow the egg. Then came the bears with their dusted coats of caramel, all gathered for hibernations harvest. They dove out from the shores of the Kirkuit as brilliant acrobats into their shared river of life. All of them feeding a hunger that time alone and consequence has brought. As it has brought me. I am compelled however to speak of truth. I am here to witness beauty, sidestepping my stock and trade of tragedy. In these first days of fall, as the leaves of cottonwood turn to trees of golden fire I wade out into the water in my chest waders to swim with the bears. The camera I have brought with me lies at the fringe of irrelevant…I am now one with the water as they are. This river of autumn’s gold.
- Colin Finlay
You will die. Man will see to that. You have beneath your paws oil, and this is something we kill men, women and children for. And death, it will not discriminate and it will not be quick. You are to be protected under the endangered species act, but the caveat is that you are the only animal where your environment does not have to be protected. Inuit elder’s are said to be reincarnating into your very essence. To know what it is that you feel, to learn from within your soul. Inhabit your eyes, to understand your pain, and the hunger that consumes you, joining you in your plight.
The scientists that I have worked with, your brothers of great empathy, they have been studying you since 1969 and tell me that by 2015 half of the bears in my photographs will be gone and the entire population will be extinct by 2040. I have now heard that since our conversations that number has been reduced downward to 2035. The ice bear will be gone, bred in captivity and living in zoos of white paint and swimming pools so that we can go visit her polar majesty. I am glad that I saw you when you were once free. Where I stood with you in the deep silence that is the Arctic, your infinite horizon, the land that you walk upon, your home. I arrived into your winter, to hear your breath, to see your offspring and the mother that you are, to witness, with guilt, knowing that my species will usher your sacred lives down the vast unlit halls until the last flutter of your heart dies within you.
- Colin Finlay
I found the “Lords of Africa”, and they sleep there under clouds of guilt with their innocence. Ancient infants, caught between two worlds. One that wants them and one that does not. Refugees of the Great Plains, the savannah, limbs cut from the tree of life. They whisper now into the thunder and I am here to photograph their voice.
Drought, it has come to Tsavo, the worst since 1850 and the water, the commodity that it is, is now precious and fought over. Man triumphs here, bringing down the Lords because they drink too much water, leaving less and less for his goats and cattle who do not belong here in the first place. Felling grace, leaving the infants to die of starvation. At times the tusks are taken and the Ellie’s, as the babies are known, are driven off leaving the men to butcher in peace, these harvesters of the land whales. Leaving behind what they think is a lesser god to man.
And from this darkness comes 22 baby elephants, more than twice the number they have ever had since opening in 1975. Lula, the most recent refugee to arrive, timid to stand amongst the others keeps her red jacket on the longest. Eyes still withdrawn, sucked in, closed to what she must have seen as her mother was killed before her. I don’t know how she stands with her pain, how she could allow the touch of another human, another voice. I was gifted time with them, these “Lords of Africa” and in that time I would be changed forever. I couldn’t help but be as Lula and the others folded me into their world.
From this silence came Kalama, she dropped her head and gently pushed me. From side to side she rubbed against me, seeing just how much my body would give. An early assertion of her strength, her power over me, and once I knew my place, once I was approved, she broke, gently wrapping her trunk around my wrist and lower forearm pulling me towards her. The bond. She wanted to suckle from my finger and for a brief moment I became her surrogate mother. She raised her trunk, using it to anchor or balance herself against my chest as she continued to suckle. A few minutes later, her eyes closed and I felt more of her weight upon me. She was asleep now as I held her in my arms. I brushed a fly away from her eye and felt for the first time in my life what it must be to be a parent. Her silence now sleeps with me in my heart, this gentle “Lord of Africa” and I am grateful to have shared in a love so unique.
- Colin Finlay
September 23rd - 26th is Colin Finlay in Century City Week
23rd - VIP Reception at Cal National Bank 6pm - 1800 Avenue of the Stars
24th - Lecture 6:30-8pm at the Annenberg Space For Photography 2000 Avenue of the Stars
26th - Workshop 9am-4pm at the Annenberg Space For Photography 2000 Avenue of the Stars
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