Thomas Allen

I have been photographing most of my life. From my time in high school, when the PR Director of my school, who had been a professional glamour photographer in NYC, became advisor for the school newspaper (of which I was the editor). He built a darkroom in an abandoned building on campus, and I was hooked! I became quite a fanatic in the 1970s, during my college and graduate school years, and wore out a couple Pentax Spotmatic cameras along the way, shooting all black and white. I was particularly inspired by the photographer Eva Rubenstein, with whom I took a summer workshop in 1977. Her work combined both a simplicity as well as a very deep emotional connection to her portrait subjects and photographs of inside, intimate spaces. After graduate school, I started a family, and, well, the next 30 years my photographs were mostly of my family, although my job (professor at Gallaudet University) enabled me to travel, and some of my nicest images were those taken on the road. Now that I am retired, I am interested in expanding my portfolio beyond my family, and I have continued my love of travel photography. I am especially intrigued by images of tableaus – 3-D relationships of people engaged in parallel activities (“Young Joggers”), and structures (“Pavilion Structures”). The ways that people, by nature (but likely without forethought or intent), position themselves in groups interests me. My wife, Roberta, and I are fortunate to be able to travel in retirement, which we are doing a lot of, as our two sons have moved far away and in different directions, one to Los Angeles, and the other to Brooklyn. At the same time, I am passionate about my earlier work, and I have devoted considerable time to digitizing some 40-50K negatives, and restoring many images that tell the story of my life, my autobiographical visual memoir.