Petra Collins

“My mother struggled immensely with mental illness, and so did I. She grew up bipolar, but it was never diagnosed nor recognized. It was shrugged off like a 'symptom' of being female - of her being weak. I also experienced this growing up: I felt that the great pain I experienced was a dramatisation.”

“I want people to see themselves in a person. I never want someone to aspire to be someone else.”

“It's hard for every girl to accept their body. This is something that I try to work on every day to set a good example.”

“It's very insulting when you're in charge and someone is talking down to you.”

“I'm either working or I'm lying in bed the entire day.”

“A thing that I'm always worried about doing is putting an image of myself on my Instagram or somewhere else that looks perfect, because that's not who I am, and that's not what I want to preach.”

“The selfie is a powerful tool, but it can also be dangerous, and I am fascinated with the process of it because there is a level of self-monitoring.”

“I keep this Hungarian wooden candlestick on the top of my refrigerator along with all my other candles. It's big and ugly, especially next to all my pretty candles, and it doesn't really make sense to have in my apartment.”

“I'm used to being told by society that I must regulate my body to fit the norm. I'm used to the fact that images of unaltered women are seen as unacceptable.”

“Being taken seriously as a young woman is the biggest hurdle as I grow older.”

“I came to New York with no money and just one suitcase. I had my family's emotional support, but they weren't able to help me financially.”

“I started out taking photos of my friends on, like, disposable cameras, and I documented my younger sister and her friends all through high school.”

“I really wanted to feel strong, I wanted my subjects to feel strong, but I didn't know how to do that. It's really hard for, I guess, every woman to not internalize misogyny. I just learned as I went on how to best capture my subjects without objectifying them.”

“My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can't just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English.”

“We have this weird beauty standard where women, like, shouldn't grow: what we think is feminine is often what is also pre-pubescent.”

“I remember being 12 or 13 and reading 'Seventeen' and 'CosmoGirl.' They were all about self-improvement.”

“I always had this feeling, what I wanted to do. I was trying to work out myself, my frustrations, my body. I couldn't really pinpoint. I started taking photos of my sister and her friends. I was 15, exploring what it meant to be a 15-year-old girl.”

“I'm very lucky that I'm not a photographer for hire - people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I've worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.”

“If I have extra money, I always love to support my friends who're making art.”

“I'm used to seeing women being degraded, slut shamed, harassed for what they look like. Even the most powerful women in the world are measured by their appearance and constantly ridiculed for it.”