Allan Davey
article by Kim Horsman, photography by Myles Wilson
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
William Wordsworth
Since Allan Davey graduated from Fanshaw in 1993, his range of work has grown to include digital imaging, commercial photography, fine art photography, and book covers. A highly successful commercial photographer, Davey has come full circle and is now on the Fanshaw Advisory Committee for the School of Contemporary Media and he is on the cutting edge of developing digital media technology.
Allan also studied music, and he finds working with musicians as natural a place to be as the Florida Everglades photographing alligators. He is currently working on the album art for a new recording by The Wild Strawberries, “The Go Project”. Allan is also creating a series of billboards for an anti-smoking campaign for the Kansas Health Foundation. Along with on-going commercial photography work for aerospace and military engine manufacturers Pratt and Whitney, he has contracts for no less than nine book covers – this will make a total of 1100 book covers to date!
In the centre of this prolific and diverse career is one thing: the image. I asked Allan Davey what a photograph means to him – what does it do? He sees creating a photograph as similar to creating a painting, and he uses many techniques and mediums to build a story. When creating original art work, he favours straight photography with the intent to make people think and feel something – how that comes together for him doesn’t really matter. In making art, if someone wants to take a photograph and paint on it, it doesn’t matter. For Allan, there are no hard and fast rules.
I wondered if the democratization of technology in photography had changed his creative practise, and what his advice would be for emergent photographers. Allan feels that, yes, things absolutely have changed, with clear advantages and disadvantages. The idea is to carve a niche and to keep adapting. It is harder to make a living now and there are more and more photographers, but rather than be fearful of the changes in technology, he has chosen to embrace it and be inclusive of the massive influence the creation of images has on our planet.
Technology has opened up a whole world of clients for Allan. It has changed the way he shoots pictures and it’s opened him up to collaborative work with other photographers. For example, Pratt and Whitney build military engines which he can’t have access to, so they send him images and Allen then uses his own stock and builds scenes digitally. He now travels to gather images and is creating a stock library. It’s actually more cost effective to have a library of photographs and use them to create an image for the client. Many commercial images simply could not be made traditionally, because the cost is so prohibitive.
Book covers, on the other hand, don’t need to look like a photograph of a product, so building the image is even more creative. In looking through Allan’s portfolio, one can see our Avon River, a little bridge walkway at a local school, bits and pieces of our town, and then another piece from some exotic location. All creating one world – the story of the completed image.
None the less, the tsunami of photographs available can be an issue for a professional. The quality of the cameras and the resolution has gone up and way beyond what most portals need, and the cost has gone down. The availability of methods for people to get their work out there has gone through the roof. With so many challenges as a result, I asked Allan if he ever felt there was a road less taken, another way. He answered “Yes, and that’s the point! I am curious and passionate about a lot, so there will always be a road less taken.”
Widely traveled, Allan Davey has visited over 45 countries throughout his career. As a photographer he has an objective view of different cultures and I was curious about his impressions. Allan says that in places where people have nothing he has found incredible warmth and generosity. In the North American culture, we have a perception that our way is the right way, so we are very closed off to other cultures and what they can give us. But there are so many “right ways”, and this arrogance won’t serve us well. As Allan puts it, “It’s a big beautiful world full of amazing people and North Americans preconceive what they are about to experience – and really they have no idea.”
This is very much like the images that Allan Davey creates – commercial work or fine art, it doesn’t really matter. It’s a big beautiful world and there are many different parts and surprising ways that he brings it all together to tell one story.