Hailing from New York, Jamaican-Iranian artist Khalik Allah is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker documenting Black life across the diaspora. In his hands, the camera illuminates the spirit made flesh, liberating the soul of his subjects from the burdens of their social circumstances.

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Whether making images in East Harlem for the film ‘Field Niggas’ (2014) and his first book Souls Against the Concrete (University of Texas Press, 2017) or traveling to the Jamaican countryside to explore his family roots in ‘Black Mother’ (2018), Allah invokes the teachings of the Five-Percent Nation in his work. In summary Allah describes the Nation – which emerged in Harlem in 1964 and in which he grew up in as “an educational outreach movement.” He continues: “Its teachings are directed at young black men and women to give them ‘Knowledge of Self’; to uplift them by restoring them to the awareness of Black people’s contributions to world history prior to American slavery.”

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Here, the 2020 Magnum nominee discusses the importance of staying true to his vision and following his own path to co-create stories of love and innocence with his subjects.

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