Paula Allen is a social documentary photographer. She began her career, 30 years ago, photographing nonviolent revolutions such as the European nuclear disarmament movement, focusing on Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in England and the Solidarity movement in Poland. She has also photographed in the war zones of Northern Ireland, Lebanon, Angola and Afghanistan. Her work has been published in numerous magazines: The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Paris Match, The London Independent Magazine, Art in America, O:The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire, Glamour, and Photo District News, among others.

Allen traveled for Amnesty International to Chechen refugee camps in the Russian Federation (November 2001) and to Southeast Asia (March 2005) to document women who were forced to work as sex slaves by the Japanese Military during WWII. For Refugees International, she traveled to Afghanistan (2002) and Angola (2003). She has worked extensively with V-Day, the movement to end violence against women (founded by playwright and activist, Eve Ensler), traveling to Kenya to document the resistance movement to female genital mutilation (March 2002, August 2005, August 2009); to Juarez, Mexico to document the murders of women factory workers (February 2004); to Haiti to support the building of a ‘Safe House’ for women (April 2007); and the Democratic Republic of Congo (for V-Day and UNICEF) to document the genocide of women and girls and the building of a community called “The City of Joy” (May 2007, November 2007, September 2008). Her images from all these assignments have been used in human rights campaigns throughout the world.

In 1999, Ms. Allen published a bilingual book, Flores en el Desierto/Flowers in the Desert (Cuarto Propio, Chile), which tells the story of a group of women in the northern desert of Chile as they searched for 17 years for their relatives who were “disappeared” after the 1973 coup. The book will be republished in 2010 with the University Press of Florida.

Presently Ms. Allen is also completing another book project: Homecomings, which follows three families recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Paula Allen’s exhibit, “The Betrayal of Srebrenica” produced by historian Lisa DiCaprio, is currently on display at Boston College and has been shown for the past two years at universities throughout the United States and at the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Sarajevo.

Paula Allen has lectured nationally and internationally on topics such as Women Around the World Demand Justice, The Democratic Republic of Congo, Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Women in Prison, Havana, Human Rights: Accountability Around the World, The Power of Image and Intimacy, and The Women of Calama (Chile) , at places such as Columbia University, New York University, University of Massachusetts, Washington and Lee University, Kansas State University, Old Dominion University, Lafayette College, Wheaton College, University of Montana, Cottey College, Sussex University, University of Michigan, Grand Valley State University, University of Chile, and at the International Center of Photography in New York City. She is represented by Speaking Matters, New York, www.speakingmatters.org.