William Albert Allard

Description

This gorgeous gift book reveals 50 years of photography by "National Geographic" photographer Bill Allard. Allard's style called for entering people's homes and hearts; by winning their confidence he was able to capture off guard moments, and reveal the depth of human nature as never before seen in the pages of "National Geographic". Allard's 50-year retrospective begins with a small section on America, where his work includes "The Hutterites", the "American Cowboy", the "American Blues", and a recent story on "Hunting". His international coverage is 80 percent of the book, covering such wide-ranging topics as the Basques, Sicily, Peru, Paris, India's Untouchables, Bollywood, and the urban elephants of Thailand. His talent as an artist is enhanced by his gift as a writer, and his running commentary gives additional depth to the images. He is unique as a photographer in saying: Words and pictures can work together to communicate more powerfully than either alone.

The son of a Swedish immigrant, William Albert Allard was born in 1937 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He studied at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts and the University of Minnesota. Allard is a photographer of people. One of the few photographers of his generation whose entire professional body of work is in color, he has contributed to National Geographic Society publications as a staff, freelance, and contract photographer and writer since 1964. In January 1996, he once again became a staff photographer.

"Ranging from cowboys to fashion models, and from street scenes in Paris to everyday life in highland Peru, these images show one of the modern photography's masters at the peak of his form." -Book News "The breadth of [Allard's] work is apparent in the sumptuous 'Five Decades: A Retrospective'...Although his landscapes and street scenes are gorgeous, the portraits are what stay with you...Allard is a sculptor on film, chiseling faces and figures into monumentality." -Wall Street Journal online