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Christine Collins
The Keepers

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Christine Collins, Untitled from the series The Keepers, Archival Pigment Print, 2010.
Courtesy of the artist and Jen Bekman Gallery.

Artist Statement
In the series The Keepers I photograph people who are keeping beehives in suburban environments. Once limited to more rural areas, the practice of beekeeping participates in our fantasies about a suburban utopia, where we attempt to achieve both a pastoral and domestic landscape. Beekeeping speaks to our desire to “hold” nature in the face of an increasingly disconnected culture. I see these people as facilitators, and I think about how the small action of placing a hive in a backyard has broad implications about our desire for interconnectedness with nature. There is a kind of magic in beekeeping; it is a practice that requires patience and faith. I am making pictures that suggest ceremony, ritual, and mystery of survival.

Artist Bio
Christine Collins is a Boston-based artist who makes photographs about desire and the landscape, both natural and domestic. She holds a BA in English from Skidmore College and received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art + Design in 2005. Collins teaches photography in the undergraduate and graduate programs at the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University. Her work has recently been exhibited at Jen Bekman Gallery, The Foster Gallery, The Magenta Foundation Flash Forward Festival, and published in The Boston Globe, Town & Country Magazine, and Hawk and Handsaw: The Journal of Creative Sustainability.