Devin Allen
(b. 1988)Self-taught artist Devin Allen uses photography to combat oppression, such as poverty and racism, in the United States.
Biography
Devin Allen gained national attention when a photograph he took of the Baltimore Uprising gatherings after the murder of Freddie Gray was published as the cover of the May 2015 issue of Time. This made Allen the third amateur photographer to be featured on the magazine’s cover. In 2012, Allen took photographs of poets in Baltimore using a camera he borrowed from a friend. That next year, Allen received his first camera as a gift from his grandmother.
Allen photographed his first protest in 2014, a protest incited in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2020, Allen would again be published on the cover of Time, with a photograph he took from a Black Trans Lives Matter protest after the deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor. He founded Through Their Eyes, a Baltimore-based photography education program for students from districts where arts education is underfunded. The program, which conducts educational workshops and gives cameras to participants, received an award from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture for Dynamic Leadership in the Arts and Activism. He is a 2017 recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. Allen’s photographs have been published in Aperture, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Allen participated in the 2016–17 Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition The Window and the Breaking of the Window. This work entered the Studio Museum’s permanent collection in 2017.
Exhibitions and Events
Devin Allen
(b. 1988)Self-taught artist Devin Allen uses photography to combat oppression, such as poverty and racism, in the United States.
Biography
Devin Allen gained national attention when a photograph he took of the Baltimore Uprising gatherings after the murder of Freddie Gray was published as the cover of the May 2015 issue of Time. This made Allen the third amateur photographer to be featured on the magazine’s cover. In 2012, Allen took photographs of poets in Baltimore using a camera he borrowed from a friend. That next year, Allen received his first camera as a gift from his grandmother.
Allen photographed his first protest in 2014, a protest incited in response to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2020, Allen would again be published on the cover of Time, with a photograph he took from a Black Trans Lives Matter protest after the deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor. He founded Through Their Eyes, a Baltimore-based photography education program for students from districts where arts education is underfunded. The program, which conducts educational workshops and gives cameras to participants, received an award from the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture for Dynamic Leadership in the Arts and Activism. He is a 2017 recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. Allen’s photographs have been published in Aperture, New York Magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Allen participated in the 2016–17 Studio Museum in Harlem exhibition The Window and the Breaking of the Window. This work entered the Studio Museum’s permanent collection in 2017.