Jules Allen is a photographer and a tenured professor in the Art & Photography Department of Queensboro Community College, City University of New York, where he has taught for two decades. He was born in San Francisco, California.

He shares the belief of photographer Diane Arbus, who states, “the more specific a thing is, the more general.” The artist, Danny Dawson has said, “Allen has a “keen eye for the obvious” in his lifelong work evocative of the contemporary black experience. His images place subjects drawn from the richness of black life within universal paradigms. They have inspired collaborations with journalists, visual artists, musicians, playwrights, poets, and filmmakers.

Allen’s books include Hats and HatNots, Black Bodies and 2011 publication on boxing life in New York City’s Gleason’s Gym, Double Up: Photographs by Jules Allen, and the 2013 publication of “In Your Own Sweet Way,” a personal and intimate collection of photographic conversations across the continent of Africa. Exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, as shown in the Permanent Museum Collections & Exhibition listing below, he is the recipient of grants and awards.