Why subscribe to Opposable?

Our opposable thumbs let us touch or grasp, hold or repel. Our opposable minds can hold tight to compassion or justify horrific cruelty.

I’ll be selecting pairs and groupings of photos, drawn for decades of work and play, that offer a visual conversation between what unifies us across disparate places, events, emotions, and activities; across time and place; beyond nationality, age, race, sex, and tribe ... and what divides us.

When a shot of a livestock market in 1982 China sits across from a farm in the Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, there is not just 40 years and 7,000 miles of separation, but worlds of difference. There is also shared humanity and common experience.

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About Terry J. Allen

Taking photographs along the way, I have lived and traveled in Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Central America as well as in the US. I spent seven years in Japan as a pottery apprentice and made several trips to El Salvador, where I worked with the Mothers of the Disappeared and reported on and photographed the war and its toll. Later, I was editor of Amnesty International’s US magazine and worked for a short time in Iraq just before the US invasion. My reporting and/or photography has appeared in The Guardian, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, In These Times (where I wrote a regular column), and many Vermont outlets. My photos have been exhibited in group and one-person shows at various small venues. Currently, I am working on (and seeking a publisher for) Opposable, a book that will feature some of the images on this site.

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