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COLLETTE V. FOURNIER

 

I made the decision to become a photographer from high school days when I took my first magical darkroom course and learned about photographer Gordon Parks while reading his autobiography, “A Choice of Weapons”. Growing up in Harlem, Brooklyn and Queens, NYC, my camera bag accompanied me to Sullivan County Community College (SCCC) while on a waiting list to study at the Rochester Institute of Technology. In one history course at SCCC, I designed a book cover featuring Egyptian statues from the Brooklyn Museum collection and printed black and white images glued onto burlap material. I started to see the possibilities of the photographic medium and its’ effect on historical documentation.

Studying photography at RIT introduced me to color printing, color theory, portraiture, large format, medium format and 35mm photography, lighting for portraiture and still life, the History of Photography, Materials and Processing of photographic sciences like densitometry, sensitometry, mixing film and paper emulsions, and D-Log E curves to achieve consistent exposure results. I took critical classes in Design, Industrial photography, television, 16mm filmmaking and Business. Upon finishing my photography degree in Illustration and Communications at RIT, I worked for two television stations as a production assistant, engineering trainee and editing 16mm film. Living in Rochester, NY, I could visit the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House to experience photographic history and the Dryden Theatre to see international and independent film.

Working part-time for five years as a staff photographer for about…time magazine, a monthly publication allowed me to document and design personal projects for the magazine. In between working part-time, I taught black and white photography at the Community Darkroom and color photography composition to adults for a Continuing Ed program using slides. I owned a photography and production business shooting weddings, family portraits, food and annual reports and assisted photographers on occasion. Naturally as a freelancer, I was always busy. I received my first grant from United Church Ministries to photograph Jamaica, and Martinique in preparation for my first one-woman exhibition at The Eisenhart Museum Gallery, Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Returning to New York City area I worked as a staff photographer for Gannett’s Journal News and two years later for the Bergen Record. As the economy faltered, I went to work for Rockland Community College (RCC) as an adjunct in the Photography Department, and eventually as a full time administrator in Communications as campus photographer.

Two significant things happened in 2001. I attended a low-residency graduate school program at Vermont College to achieve my MFA and was invited into Kamoinge, an African American photography collective. Along my journey, I continued curating exhibitions, being invited into group shows and having work published in tabletop books including Kamoinge’s “Timeless” and “Sweet Breath of Life”, photography educational books and Dr. Deborah Willis’ photography books. Through Kamoinge, as an Open Society Fellow, I documented a series on Post Hurricane Katrina. I produced an A/V slide production “Faces and Places of West Africa” presented at SPE in Buffalo, NY. Receiving a grant from the Arts Council, I produced “Retrospective: Spirit of a People” which is a compilation of community, Post Hurricane Katrina, Amistad Series, and West African photography narratives. To date, I have had fourteen one-woman exhibitions and forty-three group exhibitions and lecture at various photographic SPE, UPAA, MFON conferences. My “Ripple of Thunder: A History of Black Motorcyclists” signature series is currently on view in Photoville 9 th Edition, a traveling exhibition 2020-21.

My work is collected in PCPP, Photography Collections Preservation Project, Finkelstein Memorial Library, Spring Valley, NY, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photography Collection, New York, NY, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC, Women In Photography International Archive, CA and in private collections.

I’ve completed my personal narrative and am working with an editor to publish my first photography narrative.