Terry Allen was 19 when he convinced his parents to buy him a Minolta camera for Christmas. Not long after, he stood outside Abbey Road Studios with his sister during a family trip to London, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of The Beatles. To their surprise, Paul McCartney walked up, poking fun at their Southern accents, and stuck around long enough for Allen to tell his wife, Linda McCartney, that her book of candid photographs had inspired him to become a photographer.
“That was it,” Allen says. “I’d seen Linda’s Pictures: A Collection of Photographs—shots of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix just hanging out—and I thought, ‘This is somebody’s job? This is what I want to do.’”
Five decades later, the Athens-based photographer is still doing it. His latest exhibition, “Passenger Side,” is on view in the ACE/FRANCISCO main gallery through Sept. 18, featuring a mix of landscapes, street photography and previously unseen images from his archive of musicians.
“I’ve never taken a photography course,” he says. “I majored in accounting. But I’ve always loved music, and I always had a camera. The rest just kind of followed.”
Allen’s name is tightly linked to the Athens music scene. In college, he started shooting fraternity and sorority parties for cash. When his friends formed bands, he shot them for practice. Those friends turned out to be R.E.M., the B-52s, Pylon and Widespread Panic. “I figured I’d practice on my friends so I’d be ready when Bob Dylan called and asked me to shoot his album cover,” he says.
What started as a creative side hustle turned into a full career. Allen went on to manage the major-label band Dreams So Real, which connected him with music executives in New York. Soon, record labels were calling him to shoot publicity photos and album covers for other Southern bands, including Guadalcanal Diary and Michelle Malone.
“I sort of came into the music world through the back door,” he says. “They knew me as a band manager who happened to be a photographer.”
His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Covey Rise, Town & Country and Garden & Gun. In the early 2000s, his photography expanded into the sporting world—duck hunts, quail plantations, tweed jackets, cigars—a natural extension of his outdoorsy childhood in Statesboro.
“I grew up near the woods, running around pretending like I was Davy Crockett,” he says. “So I just started photographing that world. Pretty soon I was getting hired to shoot sheep farms in Scotland for tweed jacket companies. One thing led to another.”
Still, Allen’s most recent obsession is street photography—candid, fleeting moments in everyday life. “Passenger Side” is named for that perspective: looking out the window while life rolls by.
“I discovered Vivian Maier through a documentary and I was blown away,” Allen says. “Now, whatever job I’m on—whiskey, music, whatever—I book an extra day just to walk around the city with my camera.”
Unlike his earlier music-focused shows, “Passenger Side” leans more personal. Allen curated the collection from years of wandering and observing: crumbling shacks on the side of the road, quiet corners of unfamiliar cities, strangers caught mid-gesture.
“There’s a sort of sadness in a lot of them,” he says. “But also a beauty—in the weathered face, in the crumpled building. It shows the passing of time, but it’s beautiful.”
Some images in the exhibition capture quiet moments of firsts—a young Cindy Wilson of the B-52s leans from a car window in 1980, caught in the midst of learning to drive a stick shift. In another, two lovers embrace on a street in Liverpool after a concert, their faces drawn together in what feels like the electricity of a first kiss.
Others carry a deeper stillness. In one image, a boy sits beside a sheep, their heads gently aligned in profile. The symmetry between child and animal evokes a kind of unspoken understanding—tender, watchful and full of innocence.
“In the show, I tried to cover all the bases of my photography career,” he says. “There’s some music in there, but also landscapes, buildings and little moments. I think when you look at them they all kind of fit together.”
A companion event for “Passenger Side” will take place Aug. 14 at 6 p.m. as part of the New Town Revue series, featuring a conversation between Allen and gallery owner and photographer Jason Thrasher, plus a reading and music by David Lowery of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. Additionally, in the upper gallery, Grace Lang and Mason Pearson’s exhibition “The Nuclear Age: 2018–2025,” a seven-year photographic chronicle of the band Nuclear Tourism, is on view through Oct. 1.
WHAT: New Town Revue
WHEN: Thursday, Aug. 14, 5:30 p.m. (doors), 6 p.m. (event)
WHERE: ACE/FRANCISCO Gallery
HOW MUCH: FREE!
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