The DarkTopo Review: Allard's "Five Decades: A Retrospective"

I first encountered William Allard's work when I was shooting for a benighted small-town newspaper. We would shoot cheap as dirt ISO 800 film from the drugstore and have glossy 4x6 prints made and stick them to the layout with wax every Monday. They'd then be driven out of state, where the papers were poorly printed with registration errors that often rendered our subjects with three pairs of eyes.

On the shelf in that newspaper office was the National Geographic Photography Field Guide. I read the whole thing cover to cover, and then bought a copy of my own. In it was an article on Allard called “The Cultural Essay,” and I remember staring at his photos in amazement and with some measure of incredulity: I'd never seen photojournalism that looked so good, and it was so far removed from what we did at that paper that I literally didn't believe it.

William Allard is on another level.

Any Geographic photographer is clearly one of the best in the world, but few others capture the intimacy Allard does, working with subjects for decades to establish honest and trusting relationships. It shows in his portraits. How many photographers can photograph the Amish and prostitutes with the same degree of respect?


Buckaroo T. J. Symonds, IL Ranch cow camp, Nevada, 1979. Photo © 2010, William Albert Allard.

Now he has introduced the massive Five Decades: A Retrospective (303 pages, $50).

Part of Allard's genius is this: Despite the fact that the Geographic is known for the “wow” factor of its photos, these images are of normal people in normal times. There are no combat scenes or rare, exotic animals, and there is comparatively little blood or nudity. Nevertheless, the viewer is transfixed. Allard's sincere respect and rapport with his subject has been so honed that—even though his subjects were in the course of their daily lives—his audience is presented with something that is unique and revealing.


Brian Morris, Circle A boss, Paradise Valley, Nevada, 1970. Photo © 2010, William Albert Allard.

We are also lucky that Allard is a writer. It seems most photographers of this caliber are, but once again he sets himself apart, addressing the process behind each image. The best part of this book is the re-telling of his 2006 Geographic story “Solace at Surprise Creek,” which deals with his coverage of the Hutterite colonies of Montana and the death of his son. It is “perhaps the most personal story I'd ever written for publication at that point,” he writes, and you can see it in the images: Allard has taken photojournalism beyond the photographer-subject relationship, to something else entirely.


Calving time, Padlock ranch, Montana, 1975. Photo © 2010, William Albert Allard.

On this blog I do my best to avoid fixating on image quality, and instead focus on quality images. You'll find few discussions of mega-pixels or bit depth or CMOS vs CCD sensors. Let's face it—it really doesn't matter how most photos are printed. The finest printer in the world can't save a bad photo. Conversely, some of the most iconic pictures of all time—Rosenthal's Iwo Jima shot, Capa's D-Day series, or most of Cartier-Bresson's work—are reproduced in staggeringly terrible quality, and we still stand back in awe. The quality of reproduction should be the last thing photographers focus on, but sadly, it is usually the first.

Allard doesn't have that problem—he is clearly able to engage the human element and the aesthetic challenges of photographing his world. I'm sure his photos would be stunning in badly registered newsprint, but he is also a rare exception: His precision and level of craft demand the high production values of a book like this. His images open up in a way others don't, and they deliver more because of their quality. Allard's work is so detailed and nuanced that seeing it up close and printed well immediately brought back that feeling of disbelief I felt years ago.

My only lament is that this, like most of the books I review, is a retrospective. Photographers in my generation don't—or can't—shoot like this. Perhaps it's our fault, perhaps it's the changing institution of photojournalism. Blame the Internet. In any event, you don't see this kind of photography on the magazine rack any more. So, like all retrospectives, Five Decades is a sort of self-portrait, but it is also a portrait of an art whose practitioners have become few and precious.


IL Ranch buckaroo Stan Kendall at the bar, Mountain City, Nevada 1979. Photo © 2010, William Albert Allard.