To continue my obsession with photographer Thomas Allen, I’d like to point out two things:
1. Thomas Allen put all his pictures from Oprah magazine on his web-page, including some more photos that didn’t make the cut (I spilled the beans on some of these a few weeks ago with this post, but he put up even more on his blog, so I recommend stopping over and taking a look).
2. I was recently informed that TA did a photo exclusively for the Aperture Foundation. The photo (as seen below) is on sale now in limited edition quantities, and apparently they’re going like hotcakes (contact Kellie McLaughlin Kmclaughlin@aperture.org, Manger of Limited-Edition Photographs if you’re thinking about making a purchase!).
“Inspired by a love of the pop-up books of his childhood, Allen revels in creating his scenarios from vintage pulp fiction novels” (Aperture Foundation).
If fine art is out of your price range, you can at least admire the photo and read Allen’s comments about the photo and artistic inspirations on the bottom of the page.
From Thomas Allen’s Uncovered (signed, as you can see!), which made it on amazon.com’s Best Books of 2007.
The baby-board-book style collection contains dozens of photos of books cut, twisted, and coming to life (and includes my two of my favorite pictures, Bookend and Red).
I continue to think this is all so incredibly cool and am showing off my new book to everyone today! Click here to see my other posts about Thomas Allen.
Last week, I posted about Thomas Allen’s recent work for an article about memoirs in Oprah Magazine. Allen cuts people and things from books, carefully folds them into a scene, and then photographs it all with a meaningful depth of field. His work for O Magazine took over a month of work, more than a 40 count box of X-ACTO blades, and over 700 digital samples. The completed project included 6 (amazing) photos — how’s that for hard work?!
Thomas Allen has generously given me four of the digital camera proofs that didn’t “make the cut” for the O Magazine article. These aren’t printed or published anywhere else at the moment, so I am incredibly thrilled to be the one to share them with you!
You’ll find a version of the photo above on page 182 of the August 2008 issue of O Magazine. In the final photo, the book is red, no title is visible, and you catch a glimpse of woman’s arms and legs going through the screen door and coming out the other side of the book. I actually really like the stillness of the photo above. In my mind, the open screen door and the book title generate the feeling of a peaceful summer day in the country.
A photo like the one above does not appear anywhere in the issue. It was probably abandoned in favor of something else.
Although this particular boy in the water doesn’t appear anywhere in the article, a similarly vintage family of three plays in the water of a book cover on page 179 of the magazine. The close cropping of this photo differs from most of Allen’s work — it gives a real sense that you’re in the scene, but doesn’t reveal that the pieces are cut from books.
The final version of this photo is shown below, at right; the proof that didn’t make the cut is shown above (and at left below). As you can see, three dogs were added, a new book was used, and an entirely different bed was constructed for the final photo. The two photos are very different, but work around a similar idea. Both of these were taken for a section of the O article called “Three Dog Nights” about Abigail Thomas’s memoir A Three Dog Life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures above! If you want to see more Thomas Allen photos, I’ve spent some time hunting down the top five places where you can satiate yourself (Thomas Allen is hard to google, because about 10 other famous people share his name. Also, right click the links to open in new window):
I was so excited to find that my favorite photographer, Thomas Allen, provided art for the newest issue of O Magazine (yeah, I read Oprah, what?!). The article, about Memoirs, includes at least six specially created Thomas Allen photographs (don’t know who this guy is? look here), some of them full pages or full-page spreads.
Above and below are examples of just pieces from full imagines in the magazine, but I suggest a full perusal at a newstand near you (just flip to page 166).
Thomas Allen creates art out of old novels by cutting out select pieces of covers and insides and photographing them with a meaningful depth of field. (more…)
