Although not schooled in photography or art, Stuart Allen (b. 1960) is driven by a passion to travel the world, taking a camera to document the streets of cities, offering the viewer an insight into unseen urban environments. The featured images date from 2014 to 2016 across a myriad of locations including San Antonio, Denver, Indianapolis, Panama, Leeds and Bristol, charting the primary coloured windows and iron frames of anonymous buildings in undetermined metropolises. The series holds a sense of cohesion – following a steady flow of geometric balance and intense shades of red, blue and yellow, Allen ties different cities together as a universal sequence of snapshots. Devoid of a perceivable identity, each pop-coloured composition gives an impression of a building, rather than a whole idea. In this way, the Bradford-based photographer unites countries across time and space to present a keyhole vision of globalisation and symmetrical development.
