Since his 2015 photograph of Baltimore protests following the death of Freddie Gray appeared on the cover of Time, the now 38-year-old Devin Allen has used his camera to challenge uninformed narratives about his hometown.

In 2017, the Gordon Parks Foundation, named for the artistic pioneer and first Black photographer to shoot for LIFE magazine, tapped Allen as its inaugural Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow in Art. The ongoing dialogue between Parks’ legacy and Allen’s vital documentary practice shaped a recent conversation between Allen and award-winning Baltimore writer D. Watkins on the opening day of Devin Allen and D. Watkins: Baltimore, an exhibition at the Pleasantville, New York foundation running through August 28.

The show parallels the release of his new photobook, Devin Allen: Baltimore, and presents photographs from 2015-2023 alongside original texts by Watkins, who also contributed to the book.

Over the span of three books and in exhibitions across the United States and abroad, Allen—who also curated this year’s SCOUT Art Fair at Artscape—has confronted stereotypes and celebrated the city. Meanwhile, he continues to expand his commitment to Baltimore youth with his photography program, “Through Their Eyes,” which provides city students with cameras and mentorship.

Three books in 10 years is an incredible accomplishment. How have your photographic intentions changed between your first book and the most recent one?
A Beautiful Ghetto was made after the uprising, trying to show Baltimore in a different light, for Freddie Gray. We were known for The Wire, for crime, but I wanted people to better understand the uprising and see it through my eyes. I also wanted to show what I see every day walking the streets, how I perceive…where Freddie Gray grew up, the kids on the street with family and friends, the little things that a lot of people don’t see: the joy, the love, the camaraderie that we have in Baltimore.

In my second book, No Justice, No Peace, I was looking more at protests and protest movements, shooting six or seven years after the ones in Baltimore. With that [project], I was more hands-off because the Gordon Parks Foundation, D. Watkins, [writer and activist] Darnell Moore, and others kind of curated it amongst themselves and helped select the imagery.

This one has my work over the past 10 years, my portraiture, my landscapes, my protest work. I started out as a photographer in 2013 so it’s a look back at what I’ve done in this city.

Can you describe your evolution as a narrator and photographer?
When my grandmother helped me buy my first camera, I just wanted a camera. I was reading about and studying pictures of Gordon Parks, and wanted to be like him, but I didn’t have a clear perspective of what I wanted to say or what I stood for. I didn’t really know much about photography. I found my voice from Freddie Gray’s death and the uprising. It was then I started understanding what Gordon Parks meant when he said the camera was his “choice of weapons.”

Then I started studying more, [learning about] the power of portraiture from people like Carrie Mae Weems and Dawoud Bey, and the importance of telling Black stories. I understood how a lot of people that I grew up with in these communities that I roam every day don’t feel seen, or as if their stories are important. I could have gone to New York, I had that chance. I could have gone to LA too because I had that spotlight after the Freddie Gray protest image in Time.

But I was like, “no,” I need to pull a page out of Roy DeCarava’s book. He shot in and never left Harlem. Or Jamel Shabazz, who stuck 10 toes down in New York for so many years capturing these stories. That’s when I understood my power of being in Baltimore.

How has the city itself changed in the decade-plus since Freddie Gray’s death?
Remember in The Lion King, when Mufasa tells Simba not to go to the “shadowland?” That was Baltimore. Growing up we were always proud of our ’hood, where we came from. Now, the communities I used to hang out in, the places I’ve been documenting, I sometimes no longer recognize. The projects are disappearing because of gentrification. It’s so important to people like me to document the way things were, are, and be a part of the change. This is probably the safest Baltimore has ever been…[and] now everyone wants to move here.

I hate when people say it’s a “renaissance.” Baltimore has always been in a renaissance, always evolving. I remember my grandmother talking about Billie Holiday, The Sphinx Club. Baltimore has always been a city where we thrive no matter if the chips are down. We’re going find a way.