Customer Reviews

Thomas Allen: Uncovered

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I had seen a few preview images online, but nothing prepared me for the awesomeness!!! The book is printed on thick, cardboard-like pages (think young children's books), so it's sturdy and rugged and highly unusual. If you're a fan of David Levinthal's stuff, David Levinthal: Small Wonders (American Scene (Washington, D.C.), 4,), this work will appeal. If you're a fan of pulp art, or popular illustration, this will appeal. It makes me want to grab some Xacto knives and go digging through old book boxes at the local antique consignment mall. I'll return to this one again and again for that quick-hit visual inspiration. It may not as large as a standard coffee table book, but you'll never want to put it away!!! It's excellent creative re-envisioning. It's a photographic parallel of what Bill Willingham is doing with Fables - taking long-established works and repurposing them to EXCELLENT effect. If you haven't read Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile, give it a try. You're in for a treat, and it gets better and better as the story unfolds!

I have known Tom Allen since kindergarten - and always was amazed at his talent. This book is mind blowing when you take the time to think about all he did to make these photos. A great conversation piece, as well as thought provoking.

What a fabulous collection! I first saw the work of Thomas Allen in the Spring 2007 issue of The Georgia Review magazine, and was just blown away. I really feel like Allen is onto something nobody else is, both in terms of form and content. I almost don't want to know too much about his method, preferring to maintain the mystery and enjoy the results. This cool little book is a must-have for lovers of pulps, noir, dioramas, and innovative photography.

In the book "Uncovered," Thomas Allen breaks the two-dimensional boundaries of photography, with his thrilling series of pulp fiction cutouts. From rowdy pirates and cowboys to alluring heroines, Allen's characters jump off the page and come to life, setting the scene for the viewer to then create his or her own narrative. What is even more impressive about his work is that he does everything from sifting through books to find the perfect combinations of figures, constructing and staging the scenes, to lighting and composing the image, all without any digital manipulation. The 4x5 camera that he uses creates the intense focus shifts that make the characters seem to pop right off the page.

I was first introduced to this series of Allen's photographs on his website where I immediately fell in love with them. But it was only after picking up a copy of this book that I was able to fully appreciate the true genius of his work. The experience of holding this book and flipping through its thick cardboard pages awakens your sense of touch and sight, creating the sensation that you could reach down and pick up the figures as if they were actually sitting in front of you. His photographs are meant to spark the viewer's imagination. Each figure and scene has a different feeling and personality, yet the ambiguity of what is happening allows for more than one story to be told and for each individual to create his or her own version.

The overall simplicity and originality of his work is inspiring. The illusions that Allen creates with his photographs never cease to amaze me. To see such powerful images created out of something as simple as an old book, is a refreshing break from the digital, manipulated world that photography has fallen into.

The debut monograph of photography artist Thomas Allen, Uncovered: Photographs by Thomas Allen presents surprisingly lascivious images from pulp paperbacks of bygone decades, constructed into humorous and witty scenes (utilizing no digital aftereffects at all!). For example, in "Thirst" a sexy woman reaches her hand toward a man with a bottle on an adjacent volume, while in "Teeter" a man losing his balance is about to hit a precariously stacked set of paperbacks. A board book with a die-cut cover, Uncovered lets its twenty-seven four-color images speak largely for themselves. A treat for anyone who fondly remembers the trashy novel covers of yesteryear, featuring a wealth of creativity and re-imagining of bygone themes.

What a treat to get a book, open it and immediately be grabbed by the contents. 'Uncovered' did that for me. Mr Allen has been scouring pulp paperbacks for years it seems, his fight photo 'Red' was done in 2002 and used by designer Chip Kidd for the cover of James Elroy's 'Blood on the Moon'.

The twenty-eight photos in the book actually turn out to be a varied selection, a sort of template for Allen to go and explore other print media besides pulp paperbacks from past decades. 'Swell' shows a galleon tossed on the wave pages of an encyclopedia, the delightful 'Uplift' has two children on a swing or 'Migrate' with two birds having flown from a spread but leaving their shape so you can see the text on the previous and next page.

The book's production is rather intriguing. The thick cardboard like pages, round corners on two sides and a sepia tinting for an aged look on some pages are suggestive of children's books from yesteryear but the violent and suggestive nature to many of the photos seem at odds with fun and frolics of children's playbooks. The cover is brilliant though. The sexy blond is actually on page three, her shape has been die-cut from the cover.

'Uncovered' will delight anyone who opens its pages. It all looks so obvious yet it was Thomas Allen who seems to be the first person to realize the creative potential of the cut cover tableaux.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I really liked the approach the artist took in preparing this book- it was really interesting! Turned out to be a great gift, but the cardboard pages make this book deceptively skimpy. Still quite enjoyable, especially to see that child-like expression of glee on that pulp fiction fan in everyone's life.

I always knew that someday, if I flew long enough, I'd read a worthwhile article in one of those dreadful inflight magazines they stick in the pocket of the seat ahead of you next to the sick bad. My eureka moment came in December when I read United's latest issue of "Spirit" (I think it was) and an srtist called Thomas Allen was featured in quite a slick spread. I must have been exclaiming over it out loud, for later on i found out that not only had I gone ahead and ordered a copy from Amazon, but my wife did too, thinking that aha at last she had found a good Christmas present for hard-to-shop-for me.

Some of you may be wondering by now is the book worth it, or is Allen a one trick pony? I have no idea how he does the things he does with a razor blade and a steady stack of old, sometimes crumpled up paperbacks, but they say a documentary is coming and will soon be on public TV to show the artist at work. You can see in UNCOVERED how, in an effort to keep the sliced out cover image at least minimally attached to the book itself (what a curious, seemingly irrational restraint), he has been known to carve out a single line--one here shows a line of smoke mounting moodily from an unfiltered cigarette, so slim and tenuous you wouldn't think anyone could get in that narrowly.

Are they suggestive? And how! It's an Oulipean art practice, born of subtraction, that nevertheless extends itself into eros and beyond. The campy aspects of the original covers seem to dissolve under the application of all that rigor and man meets woman, woman meets woman, man meets man, and undresses right quick, just the way the Lord meant it to happen. The sensual just pops right out, almost like a physiological reaction. Just as his name, "Thomas Allen," seems to have been leached of personality, UNCOVERED clarifies the intents and purposes of one of America's favorite guilty pleasures, pulp fiction of the 40s, 50s, 60s. Wish I could see the Dallas exhibition of Allen's work at Light and Sie (the gallery has a nice slide show so you can sort of see the dimensions of his work and mind).

Wow! I'm between pays, but one look at this ripe book, and I dished over
whatever they asked. A babyboomer who found Dell Mapbacks all over the
house---and have since collected a few of the best-----
I had that instant feeling of "fullfillment" as I turned every page.
The essence of time/place perfectly realized.
Could Thomas Allen's accomplishment here be loosely called "RETRO" ?
It's totally transformed, and playful, yet retains the originality
and period flavor of that long-ago-era. And yet still modern. A winner.
(But I agree with those critics who expect the original artists to be
prominently credited.)