Go Behind the Leica Lens of Devin Allen & Andre D. Wagner
An in-depth conversation with photographers Devin Allen and Andre D. Wagner, featuring a wide-ranging discussion with each sharing their beginnings in photography and stories behind their most well known images.
Topics Include
• Leica Film Cameras
• The importance of fearlessness in Street Photography
• Tips for making photographs that can stand the test of time
• The value of having and then being a mentor
• The power of photography in your community
Devin Allen is a self-taught artist, born and raised in West Baltimore. He gained national attention when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was published on the cover of Time in May 2015 – only the third time the work of an amateur photographer had been featured. Five years later, after the death of George Floyd, Tony Mcaded, and Breonna Taylor, his photograph from a BlackTrans Lives Matter protest was published on the cover of Time magazine for 2nd time in June 2020. His photographs have also appeared in New York Magazine, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Aperture and in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He is the founder of Through Their Eyes, a youth photography educational program, and the winner of the 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship. In 2017 he nominated for an NAACP Image Award for debuting author for his book "A Beautiful Ghetto, and Award from The Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture for dynamic leadership in the Arts and Activism.
Andre D. Wagner is a photographer living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He explores and chronicles the poetic and lyrical nuances of daily life, using city streets, neighborhoods, parades, public transportation and the youth of the twenty first century as his visual language. His work and practice fits into the lineage of street photography that investigates the American social landscape, often focusing his lens on themes of race, class, cultural identity and community. He develops his own black and white negatives and makes silver gelatin prints in his personal darkroom.
His photographs have been commissioned by The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Cut, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, WSJ, Time Magazine and Vogue, among other publications. For the movie Queen & Slim Andre photographed the iconic key art and the campaigns leading images. His photographs have appeared in a number of solo exhibitions and group shows in Los Angeles, New York and North Carolina. His first monograph, Here For the Ride, was published by Creative Future in 2017. He is currently editing a 7-year-old body of work titled New City, Old Blues, to be published in 2020.
