Hannah Smith Allen works across photography, text, printmaking, book arts, and moving images to explore how American history, politics, and lore shape the American landscape and its people. Central to her practice is a fascination with image materiality: the pixels, ink, Ben-Day dots, and paper that contribute to visual history and meaning.
Allen is currently serving as a Resident Artist for the Erie Canal, a collaboration between the Erie Canal Museum and the New York State Power Authority, and is developing a new body of work on the Canal for an exhibition opening in spring 2027 at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York. In 2025, she received a Mid-Career Artist Fellowship from BAXTER ST at CCNY, followed by her solo exhibition On Broken Ground at BAXTER ST Gallery in spring 2026.
Allen’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States, including at the Phoenix Art Museum, Wave Hill Cultural Center, and SF Camerawork, and has been supported by residencies at the Lower East Side Printshop and the Vermont Studio Center. Her artist book Borderlands, published by the Visual Studies Workshop Press in 2021, is held in collections across the country. Allen has received fellowships from the Aaron Siskind Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Museum of Art, and A.I.R. Gallery and writes on contemporary photography and visual culture, with essays appearing in American Photo and Afterimage.
Hannah Smith Allen is an Associate Professor of Photography and Digital Media at Adelphi University and holds degrees from the School of Visual Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design.
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Hannah Smith Allen • Artist • Image Maker • Photographer
hannahsmithallen@me.com
© Hannah Smith Allen, 2025