Paula Allen began her career as a social documentarian 40 years ago, photographing nonviolent protests such as the European nuclear disarmament movement focusing on Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in England, and the Solidarity movement in Poland. She has also photographed in the war zones of Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Angola and Afghanistan. From 1983 to 1990 she was represented by Archive Pictures, NYC.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications: The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Paris Match, The London Independent Magazine, Art in America, O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour, Photo District News, and London Sunday Times Magazine among others.
For her work documenting Irish Travellers (a nomadic ethnic group) in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the “Troubles” (the thirty-year conflict), Ms. Allen received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1991.
For Amnesty International, Ms. Allen documented Chechen refugee camps in the Russian Federation (November 2001) and in Southeast Asia (March 2005), she photographed and interviewed the “comfort women” who were forced to work as sex slaves by the Japanese Military during WWII. For Refugees International, she photographed the return of people displaced by war in Afghanistan (May-June 2002) and Angola (January-February 2003).
She has worked extensively with Eve Ensler and V-Day (the movement to end violence against women and girls) in Kenya to document the resistance movement to female genital mutilation (March 2002 – August 2017); in South Dakota documenting native women’s rights on Pine Ridge Reservation; in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico documenting the murders of women factory workers (February 2004 – June 2008); in Haiti documenting women standing up to sexual violence (April 2007 – March 2010); and the Democratic Republic of Congo (for V-Day and UNICEF) to document the genocide of women and girls and the building of a community called, The City of Joy (May 2007 – Present).
For International Medical Corps she has photographed the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi (October 2005) and the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti (June 2010). For Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition she photographed the destruction of mountain top removal throughout Virginia and West Virginia (2012-2015).
Her images from all of these assignments have been used in human rights campaigns throughout the world in films, books, informational brochures, fundraising campaigns, posters and exhibitions. Ms. Allen’s photographs from Kenya and the DRC were used as French postage stamps in 2010 to bring attention to stopping violence against women around the world.
In May 1999 Ms. Allen published the first edition of her book Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert (Editorial Cuarto Propio, Santiago, Chile) which tells the story of a group of women in the northern desert of Chile as they searched for 17 years for their relatives who were disappeared after the 1973 coup under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In November 2006, Ms. Allen received an award from Amnesty International for her conscientious reporting on the story of women of Calama’s search for truth and justice.
A second edition of Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert was published in June 2013 by the University Press of Florida with an introduction by author Isabel Allende and the afterword by author Ariel Dorfman. In September 2013, Ms. Allen and Victoria Saavedra (from Calama) presented the book at New York University, Brown University and Wellesley College. After the tour, in October 2013, the book was launched by Amnesty International in Santiago and by the Association of the Women in Calama on the 40th anniversary of the executions of their loved ones.
In September 2014, Ms. Allen nominated the Association of the Women of Calama for a prestigious award from the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma in honor of internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow. The award granted to the women was in recognition of their efforts to pursue truth and justice in the face of grave human rights violations.
In March 2015, an exhibition of the Calama images opened at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, and continues to travel to cities throughout Chile and Latin America. Exhibitions have also taken place at the New York University (June 2006), Columbia University (March 2005), NYC and Old Dominion University Gallery (October 2000), VA. In March 2016, Ms. Allen presented her book Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert in Havana, Cuba to UNEAC (the Union of Artists and Writers) and in September 2019 the photographs were exhibited at Casa de las Americas in Havana.
Other work include: an on-going collaborative book project “Homecomings”, which has followed three families for the past 15 years still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and, a traveling exhibition of Ms. Allen’s photographs, “The Betrayal of Srebrenica”, produced by professor Lisa DiCaprio at New York University (with the support of a Puffin Foundation Grant) and which has been shown at universities throughout the United States such as Washington and Lee University (VA), New York University and at the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Sarajevo.
In 2011, after the earthquake in Haiti, Ms. Allen began photographing OFEDA: a women’s group in a tent camp in Port Au Prince. She successfully worked with the women in finding a permanent house and setting up multiple creative businesses. In October 2016, Ms. Allen traveled throughout Haiti for Artists Business Network (ABN), photographing artists (metal, soapstone, tobacco leaf and textiles) who continue to work after Hurricane Mathew destroyed the southern part of the Island.
In May 2015, Ms. Allen participated in the 12th biennale of Havana by exhibiting a selection of black and white images from her Havana series, “Isolina” – portraits made over a 19-year period of a tarot card reader in Old Havana (Taller Experimental de Papél Artesanal, Habana Vieja).
With the support of the Pulitzer Foundation, Ms. Allen and Laura Flanders (author, and host of the Laura Flanders Show) worked in Northern Ireland covering “The Troubles” throughout the 1980s and returned in 2016 to report on the 100th year anniversary of the Easter Uprising. Her photographs from Belfast in the 1980’s are presently (2022) being exhibited at the Dublin Gallery of Photography.
On November 8, 2016 (presidential election day) Ms. Allen photographed polling stations in Appalachia between Southwest Virginia and Kentucky as part of her long-term project documenting the resistance and decline of coal towns.
In November and December 2016, with the support of the organizations, V-DAY/OBR (One Billion Rising) and Voices of the Yazidi, Ms. Allen traveled with international filmmaker, Taylor Krauss to Northern Iraq, to record oral histories of the Yazidi community who are the on-going targets of a genocidal campaign led by ISIS. Ms. Allen focused on meeting with Yazidi women and girls who have escaped from captivity after being abducted and sold as sex slaves. Since her trip, Ms. Allen along with, a team of U.S. nurse practitioners and a Kurdish doctor have been successfully raising money to build a healing center for women returning from captivity where they can have a safe space to heal and learn skills for survival.
Ms. Allen is represented by Speaking Matters, a Speakers’ Bureau. She has lectured nationally and internationally on topics such as: women around the world demanding justice; the catastrophe in Chechnya; the Democratic Republic of Congo; women survivors of sexual violence breaking silence; the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; women living in a maximum-security prison; the power of image and intimacy; faith and feminism; how to discover the activist within and the women of Calama, Chile searching for their disappeared relatives. These talks have taken place at institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute, Columbia University, New York University, University of Massachusetts, Washington and Lee University, Kansas State University, Old Dominion University, Lafayette College, Wheaton College, University of Montana, Sussex University, University of Michigan, Grand Valley State University, University of Chile, Central Florida University, Brown University, Wellesley College, and University of Oklahoma
Ms. Allen teaches a workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York City called, “Why I Photograph – Understanding the Relationships Between Subject and Self”.
Presently, Ms. Allen continues photographing on the border between Mexico and Arizona, as well as the border between Canada and New York State and the resistance movement to the border wall on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, AZ.
Her work has appeared in numerous publications: The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Paris Match, The London Independent Magazine, Art in America, O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour, Photo District News, and London Sunday Times Magazine among others.
For her work documenting Irish Travellers (a nomadic ethnic group) in Belfast, Northern Ireland during the “Troubles” (the thirty-year conflict), Ms. Allen received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 1991.
For Amnesty International, Ms. Allen documented Chechen refugee camps in the Russian Federation (November 2001) and in Southeast Asia (March 2005), she photographed and interviewed the “comfort women” who were forced to work as sex slaves by the Japanese Military during WWII. For Refugees International, she photographed the return of people displaced by war in Afghanistan (May-June 2002) and Angola (January-February 2003).
She has worked extensively with Eve Ensler and V-Day (the movement to end violence against women and girls) in Kenya to document the resistance movement to female genital mutilation (March 2002 – August 2017); in South Dakota documenting native women’s rights on Pine Ridge Reservation; in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico documenting the murders of women factory workers (February 2004 – June 2008); in Haiti documenting women standing up to sexual violence (April 2007 – March 2010); and the Democratic Republic of Congo (for V-Day and UNICEF) to document the genocide of women and girls and the building of a community called, The City of Joy (May 2007 – Present).
For International Medical Corps she has photographed the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi (October 2005) and the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti (June 2010). For Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition she photographed the destruction of mountain top removal throughout Virginia and West Virginia (2012-2015).
Her images from all of these assignments have been used in human rights campaigns throughout the world in films, books, informational brochures, fundraising campaigns, posters and exhibitions. Ms. Allen’s photographs from Kenya and the DRC were used as French postage stamps in 2010 to bring attention to stopping violence against women around the world.
In May 1999 Ms. Allen published the first edition of her book Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert (Editorial Cuarto Propio, Santiago, Chile) which tells the story of a group of women in the northern desert of Chile as they searched for 17 years for their relatives who were disappeared after the 1973 coup under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In November 2006, Ms. Allen received an award from Amnesty International for her conscientious reporting on the story of women of Calama’s search for truth and justice.
A second edition of Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert was published in June 2013 by the University Press of Florida with an introduction by author Isabel Allende and the afterword by author Ariel Dorfman. In September 2013, Ms. Allen and Victoria Saavedra (from Calama) presented the book at New York University, Brown University and Wellesley College. After the tour, in October 2013, the book was launched by Amnesty International in Santiago and by the Association of the Women in Calama on the 40th anniversary of the executions of their loved ones.
In September 2014, Ms. Allen nominated the Association of the Women of Calama for a prestigious award from the Center for Social Justice at the University of Oklahoma in honor of internationally acclaimed forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow. The award granted to the women was in recognition of their efforts to pursue truth and justice in the face of grave human rights violations.
In March 2015, an exhibition of the Calama images opened at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile, and continues to travel to cities throughout Chile and Latin America. Exhibitions have also taken place at the New York University (June 2006), Columbia University (March 2005), NYC and Old Dominion University Gallery (October 2000), VA. In March 2016, Ms. Allen presented her book Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert in Havana, Cuba to UNEAC (the Union of Artists and Writers) and in September 2019 the photographs were exhibited at Casa de las Americas in Havana.
Other work include: an on-going collaborative book project “Homecomings”, which has followed three families for the past 15 years still recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and, a traveling exhibition of Ms. Allen’s photographs, “The Betrayal of Srebrenica”, produced by professor Lisa DiCaprio at New York University (with the support of a Puffin Foundation Grant) and which has been shown at universities throughout the United States such as Washington and Lee University (VA), New York University and at the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Sarajevo.
In 2011, after the earthquake in Haiti, Ms. Allen began photographing OFEDA: a women’s group in a tent camp in Port Au Prince. She successfully worked with the women in finding a permanent house and setting up multiple creative businesses. In October 2016, Ms. Allen traveled throughout Haiti for Artists Business Network (ABN), photographing artists (metal, soapstone, tobacco leaf and textiles) who continue to work after Hurricane Mathew destroyed the southern part of the Island.
In May 2015, Ms. Allen participated in the 12th biennale of Havana by exhibiting a selection of black and white images from her Havana series, “Isolina” – portraits made over a 19-year period of a tarot card reader in Old Havana (Taller Experimental de Papél Artesanal, Habana Vieja).
With the support of the Pulitzer Foundation, Ms. Allen and Laura Flanders (author, and host of the Laura Flanders Show) worked in Northern Ireland covering “The Troubles” throughout the 1980s and returned in 2016 to report on the 100th year anniversary of the Easter Uprising. Her photographs from Belfast in the 1980’s are presently (2022) being exhibited at the Dublin Gallery of Photography.
On November 8, 2016 (presidential election day) Ms. Allen photographed polling stations in Appalachia between Southwest Virginia and Kentucky as part of her long-term project documenting the resistance and decline of coal towns.
In November and December 2016, with the support of the organizations, V-DAY/OBR (One Billion Rising) and Voices of the Yazidi, Ms. Allen traveled with international filmmaker, Taylor Krauss to Northern Iraq, to record oral histories of the Yazidi community who are the on-going targets of a genocidal campaign led by ISIS. Ms. Allen focused on meeting with Yazidi women and girls who have escaped from captivity after being abducted and sold as sex slaves. Since her trip, Ms. Allen along with, a team of U.S. nurse practitioners and a Kurdish doctor have been successfully raising money to build a healing center for women returning from captivity where they can have a safe space to heal and learn skills for survival.
Ms. Allen is represented by Speaking Matters, a Speakers’ Bureau. She has lectured nationally and internationally on topics such as: women around the world demanding justice; the catastrophe in Chechnya; the Democratic Republic of Congo; women survivors of sexual violence breaking silence; the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; women living in a maximum-security prison; the power of image and intimacy; faith and feminism; how to discover the activist within and the women of Calama, Chile searching for their disappeared relatives. These talks have taken place at institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute, Columbia University, New York University, University of Massachusetts, Washington and Lee University, Kansas State University, Old Dominion University, Lafayette College, Wheaton College, University of Montana, Sussex University, University of Michigan, Grand Valley State University, University of Chile, Central Florida University, Brown University, Wellesley College, and University of Oklahoma
Ms. Allen teaches a workshop at the International Center of Photography in New York City called, “Why I Photograph – Understanding the Relationships Between Subject and Self”.
Presently, Ms. Allen continues photographing on the border between Mexico and Arizona, as well as the border between Canada and New York State and the resistance movement to the border wall on the Tohono O’odham Reservation, AZ.