Albert Arthur Allen (May 8, 1886 – January 25, 1962) was an American figure photographer and film director known for nude portraiture.

Biography

Allen was born to a wealthy New England family in 1886, and was educated in Boston. At the age of twenty-one, he moved to California and spent years traveling and studying art. In 1916, he opened the Allen Art Studios in

Oakland, California Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast of the United States, West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third ...

, where he devoted his efforts to refining photographic techniques. The studio later became known as the Allen Institute of Fine and Applied Art, before it was destroyed by a fire in 1925. The following year, Allen rebuilt the studio and called it the Classic Motion Picture Corporation, a venture that lasted two years before declaring bankruptcy. A motorcycle accident in 1923 left Allen permanently disabled, but he continued to work. His nude photographs were considered scandalous by American standards during the

Roaring Twenties The Roaring Twenties, sometimes stylized as Roaring '20s, refers to the 1920s decade in music and fashion, as it happened in Western society and Western culture. It was a period of economic prosperity with a distinctive cultural edge in the ...

. He was indicted for sending obscene materials through interstate mail, and spent years in litigation. Little is known about Allen's later life. His first commercial exhibition did not take place until 1979, seventeen years after his death. Allen died in Hayward, California, at the age of 75. He was survived by his son, Frederick.

Filmography

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Forbidden Daughters ''Forbidden Daughters'' is a 1927 American silent black & white short erotic-drama film directed by prominent nude photographer Albert Arthur Allen. This is the only known movie directed by Allen who, otherwise, was famous by his work as a ...

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Bibliography

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References

External links

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Albert Arthur Allen
at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

Albert Arthur Allen
at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

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