photo_talks: What Moves You?
Jules Allen
“Good looking out” is something Black people say to each other when they say “thank you.” It’s a concept connected to an experience Jules had over thirty years ago: he cites a chance encounter with an upper-middle-class-looking brother working in his garden on Strivers Row in Harlem who asked him for the time. Jules told him, and the guy replied, “good looking out.”
Good Looking Out is also the title of his latest book, published in June 2020. It took 30-plus years of pictorial gestation and traversing the United States and Africa to arrive at this current collection. Allen inserts himself fully and deftly into the ongoing lives of his subjects, rendering these seemingly ordinary moments as exquisite visual poems. With light, gesture, and attention to behavior as his essential elements, he uses the camera to describe the world in ways that reinvent it for our eyes. Jules has mused, “Sometimes what you’re looking for is right in front of you.”
Alexander Soria leads the conversation and the Q&A after the presentation.
For decades, Jules Allen has been making exquisite photographs of Black people in the midst of living their lives. His work expresses a truth that a culture’s power is clearest when presented on its own terms; his images place subjects, drawn from the richness of Black life, within universal paradigms. Allen attended California State University, earning a BA in Fine Arts and an MS in Clinical Counseling Psychology — a conscious choice to facilitate the understanding of human behavior.
Early influences were Weston, Bresson, and Frank, as well as DeCarava, with whom he studied at Hunter College, receiving an MFA. His photographs are in museums and private collections worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Smithsonian. His sixth book, Good Looking Out, is a visual essay of his travels for 30+ years through the US and Africa. Allen teaches at Queensborough Community College.
julesallen.photography
Alexander Soria is an instructor in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at Hostos Community College (New York City). His research focuses on aesthetics, poetics, praxis, and world literature of the 20th century. He also works as a photographer, poet, and translator from and into several languages. He is part of the Lost & Found Poetics Collective (CUNY) and his translations of Seymon Khanin poetry from Russian into Spanish are due out early next year with Caligrama Press (NYC/Madrid).
