The Allen Sisters: Pictorial Photographers 1885-1920

Rating:
Summary: inspirational
Review: Finally, an introduction to these two Deerfield MA sisters who turned to photography as a trade when deafness interfered with teaching careers. At a time when women weren't commonly professional photographers, they were able to successfully support themselves with commercial sales of pictures which were sensitive and artistic at the same time as marketable. Flynt gives us a detailed biography, many illustrations, and a hundred full-page plates of their beautiful photographs. The foreword is rich in detail about other women photographers of the time. This book is informative specifically about two women succeeding in their career, but also about the development of photography as an art form, the idealization of rural life culturally, and the political nuances of feminism at that point in time. Readers will be happy to have made acquaintance with the Allen sisters and savored their bucolic, charming, and tranquil pictures of life, specifically of children and their simple pleasures. Flynt has done an admirable job presenting the hard work of the Allens that resulted in such delicate images.

Rating:
Summary: The Allen Sisters: Pictoral Photographers 1885-1920
Review: Rare is it that any photographic book captures the imagination as does this book. The Allen sisters tale of woe school teachers gone deaf to becoming world renowned photographers from the Arts & Crafts movement is quite the metamorphises. Long and short of it this book is a testament to the strength of character of these women as they overcome lives chalanges to embrace their fullest potential in an era when women couldn't even vote. Kudos Ms. Flynt for collecting the best collection of Allen sisters photographs I've ever seen and writing, with annotation such a fine piece of literature. Ms. Rosenblum's introduction as in all her world class work set the plate for one of the finest Photographic books to be published in years.