OAKLAND, CA.- Artist and photographer Colleen Longo Collins has released Tenacious Nostalgia, a limited edition photographic monograph spanning 15 years of her artistic life. Beginning at the pivotal age of 23 when Longo Collins moved from California to Brooklyn, New York to receive her MFA in photography at Pratt Institute, this collection of images investigates the dark corners of femininity, explorations of memory and nostalgia, and growing up female. Tenacious Nostalgia is the first book in a series of monographs that Longo Collins plans to release in the near future.

Across a handful of archetypes, this first collection traverses sensuality, mystery and make-believe. Referencing memories from the artist’s girlhood into womanhood, college into graduate school, twenties into thirties, Tenacious Nostalgia examines the complex roles women play and the story that the feminine reveals. These images highlight the special and particular moment that it was for the artist: a true celebration of the female lineage who came before and have continued to influence her through their histories, past lives and generational pass downs.

Photographer Allen Frame has said of Longo Collins, “There’s such a strong mood, gesture and intimate sense of the body in this work…an approach [that] intensifies the cinematic feeling of the work. What is remarkable is its extensiveness, the really deeply elaborated, evocative type of portraiture” that is Colleen Longo Collins’ alone.

This very special, limited- and first-edition copy of Tenacious Nostalgia is printed on 12” x 12” silk-coated paper and bound in Coal Black Verona linen. It can be purchased directly on the author’s website and each first edition comes with a unique signed print from the book.

The artist will be on a book tour in California and New York City in Spring 2024 with dates and venues to be announced in the new year.

Colleen Longo Collins

Colleen Longo Collins (b. Santa Monica, California, 1980) is a photographic artist and archivist whose work explores feminine identity and the depth of her relationships with her subjects. Tracking their lives and environments for almost two decades, Longo Collins’ images are a record of time and the result of intimate collaboration. She works with traditional black-and-white photo processes and is heavily influenced by her memories of girlhood and the seductive nuances of womanhood.

Longo Collins’ early interest in the visual arts was encouraged by her eccentric youth and a fascination with documenting childhood girlfriends on a Nikon 35mm camera. After a move from Los Angeles to Alameda, California as a young girl, Longo Collins earned a Bachelor in Studio Arts from Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, California and a Master of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

For years afterward, Longo Collins documented a close circle of girlfriends—“muses”—in their dwellings across the United States. Her efforts culminated in the 2006 exhibition Tenacious Nostalgia at the Steuben Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, and in 2023 she published a monograph of the same name.

After receiving her MFA with honors from Pratt Institute, Longo Collins was selected by New York Times writer Michael Brenson to participate in a public symposium critiqued by David Levi-Strauss, David Cohen, and Donald Kuspit, where her work was described as “film noir meets modern nostalgia.” A longtime member of the Camera Club of New York, Society for Photographic Education, she is passionate about teaching and collaboration and has co-led classes at the International Center of Photography, the School of Visual Arts, and Cal Poly Humboldt.

Longo Collins was an Artist-in-Residence at the Camera Club of New York and her works have been exhibited at Pratt Institute, Stuben Gallery, Pine Manor College, Peer Gallery, Daniel Cooney Fine Art, P.S.122, Two Trees Gallery and published in Artscape Magazine, Shots Magazine, MonthlyPhoto, and Mexico’s Fahrenheit Magazine. She lives today in Oakland, California with her husband and two sons.