WILLIAM ALBERT ALLARD

INsight Artist, 2007

“I think I can feel color. I can’t explain it, but I can feel it. In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color.”  
—William Albert Allard

“Call Allard’s photographs wonderful performances. They gain in our esteem–given their particularity, their luminance, the high finish they give to human existence–if we think of them not as facts but as art, made things, opinions, as brightly informative and indispensable mediators between the world and we who would see it, like it, live in it more fully”, wrote Richard Ford in his forward to Allard’s book Portraits of America.

William Albert Allard’s subjects address the camera with surprising openness in photographs that have been a staple of National Geographic—where he has produced over 30 articles since 1964. Equal parts colorist, storyteller, and ethnographer, his down-to-earth manner, fierce integrity, and the consistent brilliance of his essays have made him a romantic model for a generation of American photographers.

Allard's work appears in numerous museums and he has published five highly acclaimed books; Vanishing Breed, photographs and writing about cowboys and the West was nominated for The American Book Award and received the Leica Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Achievement.