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Devin Allen is an American photographer,
photojournalist, and activist based in
Baltimore, Maryland
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
. He gained national attention after the
Freddie Gray protests in 2015, when his documentary photograph entitled "Baltimore Uprising" was published as ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine's May 2015
cover photo.
His documentary photo of the
George Floyd protests
The George Floyd protests were a series of protests and civil unrest against police brutality and racism that began in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020, and largely took place during 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of internat ...
was published as ''Time''s June 2020 cover.
Allen's photographs are held in the
Smithsonian collection of the
National Museum of African American History and Culture
The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is a Smithsonian Institution museum located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was established in December 2003 and opened its permanent home in ...
.
Career
''Baltimore Uprising'' and other projects (2015–2019)
Allen gained national attention and media prominence after the 2015 protests following the death of Freddie Gray. However, Allen shared his first protest photographs a year later, following the
police killing of
Michael Brown, an 18-year old black-male resident of
Ferguson,
Missouri
Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...
on August 9, 2014.
The murder sparked protests across the neighborhood where the incident took place.
After the death of
Freddie Gray
On April 12, 2015, Freddie Carlos Gray Jr., a 25-year-old African American, was arrested by the Baltimore Police Department over his legal possession of a knife. While being transported in a police van, Gray sustained injuries and was taken to ...
on April 12, 2015, Allen—who grew up five minutes from where the Baltimore police murdered Freddie Gray
—documented the protests and posted his subsequent photos on
Instagram.
Across three weeks of the protests, Allen took around 10,000 photos. His images capturing the protests went
viral and were covered by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' ,
and others.
A photo Allen took of the protests on April 25, 2015 was chosen as ''Time'' magazine's May 2015 cover,
making Allen the third
amateur photographer to be featured on the cover of ''Time''.
The photograph, titled ''Baltimore Uprising,'' shows a man running away from a pack of charging
police officer
A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...
s in the city of Baltimore. After Allen uploaded the photograph from his camera to his phone, it took him several hours to realize the photograph had gone viral, as he had continued photographing the protests until after dark that evening.
In 2015, building off his recent media attention from ''Time'' magazine, Allen launched "Through Their Eyes", a youth program that teaches photography to Baltimore city school students, specifically those from districts with underfunded arts education programs. The program includes giving cameras to students, as well as organizing educational workshops and art exhibitions of student work.
In 2016, Allen's photography exhibit "A Beautiful Ghetto" was held at the Gallery Slought.
In 2017, Allen published his first photography book as a
coffee table book
A coffee table book, also known as a cocktail table book, is an oversized, usually hard-covered book whose purpose is for display on a table intended for use in an area in which one entertains guests and from which it can serve to inspire convers ...
titled ''A Beautiful Ghetto''.
The book was nominated for the
49th NAACP Image Awards
The 49th NAACP Image Awards ceremony, presented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), honored outstanding representations and achievements of people of color in motion pictures, television, music, and liter ...
in the category of "Outstanding Literary Work – Debut Author".
Allen was selected as the first recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in 2017.
The Fellowship supported the continuation of his "Through Their Eyes" project.
George Floyd protests (2020–present)
After the murder of
George Floyd, a
Black American killed during arrest by a white police officer named
Derek Chauvin, Allen attended a Baltimore protest on June 5, 2020 organized by demonstrators representing the city's Black
transgender
A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through ...
community.
At the protest, he captured a photograph that was featured on the cover of ''Time'' magazine. The photograph shows a protester sitting with a
megaphone
A megaphone, speaking-trumpet, bullhorn, blowhorn, or loudhailer is usually a portable or hand-held, cone-shaped acoustic horn used to amplify a person's voice or other sounds and direct it in a given direction. The sound is introduced int ...
, while other demonstrators lie down on the ground.
In July 2020, Allen was selected as a
Leica Ambassador.
Personal life
Allen was born and raised in
West Baltimore
West Baltimore station is a regional rail station located in the western part of the City of Baltimore, Maryland along the Northeast Corridor. It is served by MARC Penn Line trains. The station is positioned on an elevated grade above and betwe ...
.
As of 2020, Allen is still active in the Baltimore community and says that his goal when documenting events like the protests is to make sure he tells the whole story.
According to a report on
National Public Radio
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
(NPR), Devin Allen received his first camera as a gift from his grandmother in 2013.
It was a
Canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
camera that she bought on credit from Best Buy, as per NPR.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Allen, Devin
Living people
Activists from Baltimore
Photographers from Maryland
American photojournalists
African-American photographers
Year of birth missing (living people)
21st-century African-American people