This exhibition celebrates the publication of Devin Allen: Baltimore, awarded the 2023 Gordon Parks Foundation / Steidl Book Prize. Conceived as a personal narrative about what Allen has called “the texture of us,” the book encompasses formal portraits, images of protests and street scenes. The exhibition includes photographs spanning 2015–2023 by Allen, a 2017 Gordon Parks Foundation Fellow in Art. The works are presented alongside texts by D. Watkins, a 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. The selection includes new writing as well as excerpts from his essay “Devin Allen’s Baltimore,” originally published in the book.

Devin Allen is a self-taught artist, born and raised in West Baltimore. Allen was awarded the first Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship in Art in 2017. That same year, he was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for his book A Beautiful Ghetto. His second book, No Justice, No Peace, was released in 2022. His photographs have been published in New York magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, i-D magazine, and Aperture, and are in the permanent collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, and the Studio Museum. Allen is also founder of Through Their Eyes, a youth photography educational program. He lives and works in Baltimore.

D. Watkins is the 2024 Gordon Parks Foundation Genevieve Young Fellow in Writing. He is The New York Times–bestselling and award-winning author of The Beast Side, The Cook Up, We Speak for Ourselves, Where Tomorrows Aren’t Promised (with Carmelo Anthony), Black Boy Smile, and The Wire: The Complete Visual History. Watkins is editor-at-large for Salon. He is a writer for the HBO miniseries We Own This City and hosts the show’s companion podcast. His work has been published in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and other publications. He has been recognized with, among other honors, the Johns Hopkins Distinguished Alumnus Award, membership in the Johns Hopkins University Society of Scholars, the inaugural Signal Award for best host of a podcast, the Paris Book Festival Award for general nonfiction, the CityLit Dambach Award for Service to the Literary Arts, and the Maryland Library Association’s William G. Wilson Maryland Author Award. Watkins is a lecturer at the University of Baltimore, and lives in Baltimore with his wife and daughter.