Jonathon Collins

Jonathon Collins

Freelance photographer & writer

Jonathon is a Sydney-based adventurer working in sustainability consulting and using photography as his creative outlet. His first taste of freedom came as part of his university studies, where he underwent research in islands on the Great Barrier Reef, across rural Indonesia and eventually living in a remote village of Bangladesh during the monsoon. Since then, he is always scoping out his next country to explore and capture through a lens.

Q: In 200 characters or less, why do you want be part of #PassportToAsia?

A: Asia is a not a destination. It is a heartbeat; a flowing rhythm of life pulsating in every corner, from the color in markets, buzzing sidewalks or the quiet of local homes, each with a story to tell.

Q: In 200 characters or less, tell us which of the following monkey attributes best describes you: Intelligent, curious, quick-witted, versatile, or mischievous. Why?

A: Curiosity is a quality that I attribute to all my endeavors. A curiosity to know other lives, other landscapes, other histories, other contexts, other faces. To see the world is not actually divided.

Q: What is your creative pursuit? How might #PassportToAsia play a role in developing it?

A: My pursuit has always been to capture moments for what they are, as they exist in a certain time or place. Photography has helped me pin point my exact emotions as I too experience it; a person’s smile, the beauty of a foreign land. It is in hope to inspire others to stop and experience these moments more as they are ones we forget to pause, but ones that make us who we are no matter which corner of the Earth we come from. #PPtoAsia will be a chance to continue this and inspire others to pause.

Q: Why is travel important?

A: Since I can remember, I have always questioned how I fit into the diverse jigsaw of this world. It was unsettling to imagine how my life could impact another, when continents and people were split into such clear divides. The more I travelled, the more I began to understand I was living my life as if I was running somebody else’s race; letting my feelings and emotions be defined by structures which did not actually exist. No matter where I went; a mothers love for her child was expressed the same, a meal always brought a group together, people bantered over politics and wealth on streets and in cafés or homes… I witnessed emotions and interactions that surpassed every convention, regardless of a language, race, religion, gender or sexuality. Far too often do we let these boundaries define us and our pathways in life. We deny the fluidity of each and the underlying and inevitable truth to this world; we are just humans… Just humans, capable of loving just as we are capable of breathing. I am the combined effort of every person I know; my mother, my father, my brother and my friends. Strangers who I meet briefly, or those I am yet to meet in later walks of life. It is a delicate and colourful web, and one which is painted across every sky, every ocean and one I am proud to have pumping through my veins. I attribute my travels, through both hardship and incredible triumphs as the reason I can see this so clearly.