Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013  © Khalik Allah, courtesy Gitterman Gallery
Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013 © Khalik Allah, courtesy Gitterman Gallery 
TITLE_NAME :
Khalik Allah

09/03/2018 - 12/05/2018

GITTERMAN 
41 East 57 Street, Suite 1103 
 
10022 New York

www.gittermangallery.com   

 
Gitterman Gallery presents an exhibition of color photographs by Khalik Allah (b. 1985). 
 
It is easy to walk through a city not making eye contact, but for Khalik Allah this contact is essential. He sees each individual he photographs. And his photographs in turn allow us to see them, to acknowledge who we might ignore, to look through Allah’s eye and into theirs, and to recognize them as individuals. This is the power of Allah’s work: to give us a deeper sense of people as people, to share and enlighten, even when the message may not be clean or easy.

The works in this exhibition are drawn primarily from images in his recent book Souls Against the Concrete (University of Texas Press, 2017). Made at night on 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem, the images provide a glimpse into a world and people that many choose to ignore. His subjects are often drug addicts, homeless, or both. Using only the available light from shop windows, street lights, or subway platforms, he photographs them with a slow color film, a combination that produces images full of grain and texture, a visual shorthand for the roughness and intensity of life on the street, and his own struggles early in life.