Everyday Vulnerability: the Photographs of Libbie Allen
by: Arin Black | posted: Mar 4, 2009
In photographer Libbie Allen’s most recent work, an ongoing series of saturated photographs depicting women in states of undress, there exists a kind of 70s exhibitionism that seeps through the set pieces and into the subtext. That makes sense: Allen admires photographers like David LaChapelle and Nan Goldin, and her work in her latest project recalls Bill Owens’ brand of manufactured mundane modernities blended up with Arbus and Sherman in a kind of commentary on the sad, little weirdness of the everyday. Allen takes pictures of people, sure. But there’s so much more to it than that.
It was the art critic John Ruskin who said, "The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something.” Grounded in traditions of portraiture, Allen’s pictures are deceptively simple, almost snapshots, but in looking closer, in seeing, they reveal themselves to be meticulously ordered. The pictures aren’t typified by the kind of slick, sexy fashion iconography so ubiquitous in the West. They aren’t Playboy and they aren’t kitsch. Instead they are unique, and that’s how Allen says she wants it. Indeed, at every turn, the 23-year-old photographer dodges grouping or comparisons. Allen often leaves her photographs untitled--those in the Girls series are given the name of their subjects. “I want the photographs to do the talking,” Allen says, “because if you give them a name then that’s a filter.” However, their very nature inspires the creation of narratives about the images and questions about the meta-meanings of the work.
Although she might resist the label, Allen’s photographs inevitably invoke feminist interpretations. Inasmuch as the subjects expand the parameters of feminine beauty beyond traditional ideals, they simultaneously move beyond objectification and become objects, carefully composed and casual at once. Initially, Allen began the series thinking about pinup girls. “But I didn’t want that aspect of that--the ‘look at me, look at how cute I am.’” Instead, Allen sought to discover quiet moments of “intimate vulnerability.” She used her friends as subjects and worked with them collaboratively to produce the images. “I had this idea of vulnerability that I wanted to portray,” she says. “Telling of insecurities and the desire that everyone has to be sexy and have people think they’re sexy. I am highly attracted to the photos or facial expressions when the women look most modest.” At the same time, Allen says she didn’t aim for cultural critique. “I don’t want this to be seen as an ‘every woman is beautiful.’ I find that sort of cliché.”
In every photograph she takes, Allen resists clichés. Whether a tribal celebration in Africa or children on a beach in Mexico, Allen attempts authenticity in composing her subjects. “Humans are the most interesting and complex things in the world,” she says. “I’m trying to capture the human condition through my portraiture… and my main goal is to illustrate [a] person’s personality through a single photograph.”
The results for the most recent collection translate personality within images that are lush and exposed. Color saturation is an important element in the pieces, and color itself almost becomes another subject. It pops from the frame, drips from the settings, or grits into the surfaces of each picture. “I’m a nut about color,” Allen says. “I can get turned off by the wrong color combination, really fast.” Allen began her portraits of the women upon returning from studying abroad in South Africa. “The color there is unreal,” she says. “Everything is vibrant. Their clothes, the house, the sky.”
In order to get those rich tones, Allen used a Canon digital camera for the series. “I like digital because I can shoot 200 frames in 30 to 40 minutes.” However, Allen respects the process of traditional photographic technique. Describing herself as immersed in the tactile process of art, she says she likes to get her hands dirty. To that end, she’s recently begun doing cross-processing, and sometimes shoots with a Holga. “I like the freedom that the Holga camera gives me,” she says. “I like not having the tight control that you get with digital…With digital photography, there’s so much more you can do, can fake almost. I’m not so much interested in that.” Instead, Allen does minimal manipulations and editing of her digital images. “Some may think I’m falling behind in that, but I don’t want my photography to play tricks on you.”
What she does want her photography to do is to get you to see the essence of the subject. Grounded in narrative traditions and enamored with storytelling, (“literature and photography for me always kind of fed off each other,” she says), Allen has been taking pictures since the age of 12. She graduated with her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008 and moved to New Orleans six months ago to develop her career as an artist. Allen explains that she chose to relocate to the city both because of its great collective of creative people and for the city’s similarities to Africa. “I’m obsessed with Africa,” she says. “I was…overwhelmed by how similar I felt in New Orleans as I did living in Cape Town. There’s this fresh creative vibe in both cities.”
Allen hopes to win a Fulbright in order to return to Africa in 2010, and then to continue traveling and taking pictures that tell stories. “I want to see the entire world…to go to India and China.” With her work from South Africa, she experienced the profound impact that photography can have as a cross-cultural tool, bringing new images to audiences, and the young Allen is hungry for more. “It’s a learning process. Hopefully I’ll be able to say one day that I’ve been able to capture even a stranger...the essence of a stranger.” She says, “I want to photograph it all, because that’s pretty much how I learn.”
