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Colin H. Finley (born July 30, 1964) is a Scottish-born, American photographer, artist and musician known for his documentary, photojournalism and advertising photography. He has had seven collections of his work published and has been exhibited at galleries and museums worldwide. He has received numerous accolades, including six Pictures of the Year International, four Lucie Awards and multiple Emmy Awards.

Early Life and Career[edit] Colin Finlay was born in Edinburgh Scotland. Shortly thereafter, he was on a jumbo jet crossing the Atlantic, landing in the punch bowl of sunny, Southern California where he would spend his formative years surfing. The first of his many rebirths was not until he reached his early 20’s. He was borderline idiot savant until he started to write with his left hand. This single event, allowed him to switch from left brain to right and the photographer he is today was born. After graduating from U.C.S.B. in 1987, he entered the corporate sector. The brick and mortar buildings of success, the ones that were meant to make his parents and ex-wife happy. It made them feel secure that he had taken the bit. He knew too well the dark brewing cloud above him, the one putrid with depression, and he knew he had to get out. Tom Waits had convinced him that he did not want to sell his soul. Waits' music broke through and into Finlay, and he remembers laying on the kitchen floor with big fat river tears listening to Blue Valentine; "it felt like I had a blanket for the first time. Black shadows, deep within hidden closets needed to be emptied. Searing, bleak and voiceless, until I found the camera, the instrument of such sweet sorrow, the swallower of souls... and oh how it would take mine. Photography became the language I chose, it feels today, now, that it was my first language. The beauty of this craft is that I am still learning twenty-five years later. Still telling the stories of the human condition. Advocacy and imagery." Finlay had no formal photography training, rather he learned on the road. "Documentary photography, if done from the source, is not work, it is an expression of your life. What a formal education cannot teach is passion, and that is the most important aspect of the work that I do. Passion must come from within. The streets, if you surrender to them, will teach you the hard way about instinct and initiative. They will cut your teeth as no formal education ever could or would. As a result, and in my pursuit of passion, in my desire to prove everyone wrong, I ended up, living in my car for 9 months and found myself in $43,000 dollars worth of credit card debt. I was 10 years into my career, and I had 3, maybe 4 weeks left of money to live on, but I sit here today in a coffee shop called the Bourgeois Pig, a recipient of the kind hand of fate." Dealing with the many atrocities that he witnessed as a photographer covering the worst of humanity took its toll on Finlay. He dealt with it through the consumption of copious amounts of drugs and alcohol. Anything to escape, until he could find a safe place to land back in my soul with the newly acquired knowledge of mans inhumanity to man. This could take anywhere from 1 day to several months, depending on how deep the scar or whether he'd simply been run through or gored as he was in Rwanda in 1994. Though still scars, the emotional wounds of the early days have been healed by the wisdom and grace that comes with meditation, counseling and healthy living. "It’s not about me, that simple. I am the one who chooses to get on a plane. To make the photographs that I make, I myself must be emotionally vulnerable. Otherwise the photographs are shallow and cold, just using people as exercises in geometric compositions, not images filled with empathy and dignity. This is the chasm we all must cross. The world may provide this to you in its own way. A new term, but here it goes, Method Photography. Do you have to know your own pain to best photograph it in others ? The question becomes whether or not I feel their pain. The answer is yes. Do I ever turn away, no. I have a responsibility to the people that I photograph, and in the creation of that image there is an unspoken agreement, a commitment on my part, to tell the story of their life and its tragedy."

Your book Testify, a collection of your images from the first 17-years of your career, recently won “Best Book of 2007” by Pictures of the Year International (POYi). Did winning this honor make you feel that the suffering around the world was finally getting the attention it needed and deserved? Actually, when it comes down to it; in bringing attention to the world’s suffering my photographs are but a small part. Rather, it is the collective voice, the vision that both myself and my colleague’s bring to the consciousness and awareness of a story.