VAST: Visiting Artist & Scholar Talks

Baltimore native Devin Allen is a self-taught artist who achieved national recognition when his photograph of the Baltimore Uprising was featured on the cover of Time magazine in May 2015, rendering him only the third amateur photographer to have his work published by the magazine. Following the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Tony McDade, and Breonna Taylor, his photograph from a Black Trans Lives Matter protest appeared on the cover of Time in June 2020.

Allen became the inaugural fellow of the Gordon Parks Foundation in 2017 and continues to serve as a dedicated ambassador. He is also a 2024-2025 Baldwin For The Arts Fellow.

His photographs have appeared in publications such as New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, i-D magazine, and Aperture, and have been exhibited at the Jack Shainman Gallery, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Banneker-Douglass-Tubman Museum. They are also part of the permanent collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum; the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University; and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

An accomplished author, Allen released his first book, A Beautiful Ghetto (Haymarket Books, 2017), which garnered an NAACP Image Award nomination. He later published No Justice, No Peace: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter (Hachette Book Group, 2022), winning a Nautilus Book Award.

Allen is a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation/Steidl Book Prize, culminating in the publication of Devin Allen: Baltimore (Steidl, 2025), which features previously unpublished work accompanied by texts from notable writers. In 2021, he launched From Baltimore. For Baltimore, an apparel and footwear line in partnership with Under Armour, which sold out within hours. The collaborative team, Under Armour x DVNLLN, reunited in 2025 to introduce their Rose Collection. Allen founded Through Their Eyes, a youth photography education program, and received the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture’s award for dynamic leadership in Arts and Activism. He serves as an ambassador for Leica Camera AG, a global manufacturer of premium cameras and sports optics.