Reading Response #3

Beginning with the interview featuring Devin Allen about life in Baltimore, I really enjoyed reading it and learning Allen’s story. From this very short interview, it is extremely clear that Allen’s work in his photobook A Beautiful Ghetto is very close to his heart. While the photos included in the interview transcript do not necessarily tell a continued story, it is obvious that each is worth well over 1,000 words. Despite being such simple photos, looking at the small details tell a huge story, which I find really interesting. One thing I find intriguing about Allen’s work is the fact that it is super raw in a sense. By that I am referring to the fact that he is not the type of photographer who goes out and takes a thousand photos of the same subject, and instead tries to set-up each shot to only need to take it once, which is very difficult to do with how fast-past his subject matter is.

Moving on to the article about Chip Thomas’ work in Arizona, the main interesting takeaway I found was the fact that his project was a collaboration of many street artists, not just his own work. I feel doing this helped the project gain greater respect by both the locals and critics as it is the combined work of many minds, and not that of a single one. I’m not entirely sure what the text on the artwork is, but if it is what it I think it is (story of the individual), that is a really nice touch and gives a name to the face, which I feel is very important to tell the story that Thomas and crew are trying to tell.

The photos I included this week all go along with the theme of Allen’s work in A Beautiful Ghetto as they are natural feeling single shots (albeit with a little more happiness and joy then in Allen’s work) that I took last summer while working in India. (Side note – these photos were not all taken on the same day, our luggage got lost in transit so the group wore the same two outfits for nine days)