Guest Interview with Allie Crewe

Allie used to lecture and the  decided to walk away when she had a photograph hanging in a gallery alongside work by Martin Parr. Allie started photography when she was 16 or 17 shooting black and white with film. But Allie had a difficult childhood and so felt she had to get a “sensible” degree so she did a degree in English literature. She then taught, until she felt she had been “bled dry”. When her daughter was in her teens Allie Crewe went to night school to study photography. Allie had already studied film and Italian at night school and loved learning.

 

Allie’s journey from night class to gallery was an interesting one. Her first tutor thought an image (you can see it here), the one hanging on Allie’s wall behind us as we record the podcast, had something about it. So her tutor sent it to a curator. wasn’t sure about it being sent, but her tutor sent it while Allie was taking a break in the loo. Her work was accepted and ended up in a gallery amongst lots of photographs by high calibre male photographers. She came home three mornings afterwards and decided that she would leave the security of teaching and move to being a photographer.

It changed her life. From that initial success Allie has quickly enjoyed a lot of success. She had an exhibition about domestic violence that was opened by Queen Camilla. And that bought a lot of press and publicity.

 

Allie is unsure as to whether she could have managed this work when she was younger. All the work has been about her in some way. She has started her work thinking about herself and then connected to a group and the work then becomes about the group. One example of this was her work with trans women. Allie’s work has appeared in many national papers including the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Sun. She enjoys the social conscience work and making work that is relevant to people who want change. And she enjoys being authentic and becoming part of the group she is working with.
Allie has won several awards including the BJP (British Journal of Photography) award. She got this with an image of Grace, a doctor. Allie feels that the award was a way of validating herself. Allie explained that this is a male dominated industry with a 40% pay gap. She felt this award made her feel validated and helped with imposter syndrome. But as well as the positives awards add pressure including pressure to get more. Allie also has an award from the RPS (Royal Photography Society).

Allie is currently studying for her masters at Ulster and in her first year her tutor was Ken Grant. He is now with Donovan Wylie. She was with ken at Martin Parr’s studio for a few days. It was there she got asked to enter the RPS award.
Sam and Allie discussed the idea that there are awards at every level that photographers can go for and these wards are great for your marketing. But equally this is not compulsory as a photographer. We can as photographers do work just for ourselves.
Allies Instagram references Chris Killip who is a photographer she is drawn to. She found his recent exhibition very emotional. Allie has been careful in her masters to only reference female photographers, but personally she likes all sorts of photographers.
Alessandra Sanguinetti has an amazing book called "Some say Ice". Alys Tomlinson is also an influence who Allie was looking at on the morning of our conversation.
Allie still shots film, 35mm and medium format. She loves her Mamiya camera.
Marcus asks Allie how people can get into shooting portraits for exhibitions magazines and books. Allie explains that for her she chose something than was personal and took it from there. She worked as an artist in residency with the help of her connections (ones she had worked hard to build). From that starting point she felt the artistic residency gave her the legitimacy she needed when showing her work or entering it for competitions.