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Working Assumptions

@workingassumptions

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We explore the everyday give-and-take of family and care through visual storytelling.

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I’m honored to announce that I’m a 2026 Working Assumptions Project Grant recipient!

The Working Assumptions Project Grants support photography and photo-based art projects that explore and reflect the many ways we care for and show up for one another.

I’m grateful to be recognized alongside an incredible group of photographers whose work examines the complexities of family life, care, and community.

Thank you to Working Assumptions for supporting my project “Valley of the Forgotten / Valle de los Olvidados” that combines two decades of documentary photography and a collection of handwritten postcards, prayers, and stories from immigrant farmworker communities. The photos span a time of drought, global pandemic, and mass deportation.

Learn more about the grant and this year’s recipients at @workingassumptions.

#WorkingAssumptions #WorkingAssumptionsGrant #DocumentaryPhotography #FamilyAndWork

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“Posted Up On The Wicker,” - 1970s

She Saw Me Coming series - 2026

September 26th - December 4th -

@charmcity_cc

Link in my Bio

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“Shiny Suits On A Easter Sunday,” - 1990

She Saw Me Coming series - 2026

September 26th - December 4th
@charmcity_cc - presents She Saw Me Coming, a powerful new solo exhibition by acclaimed photographer, author, and activist Devin Allen. On view from September 26th-December 4th, 2026

Link in my bio

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“At Odell's with my homegirl,” - 1982

She Saw Me Coming series - 2026

Link in my bio

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Devin Allen: She Saw Me Coming

Please join us for the opening celebration on Saturday September 26th from 7 to 9 p.m.

RSVP/linktre to attend opening reception

Free and open to the public during standard gallery hours, Wednesday through Saturday from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. The exhibition will be on view from Sept 26th - Friday Dec 4th at Charm City Cultural Cultivation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BALTIMORE, MD — Charm City Cultural Cultivation (CCCC) is proud to present She Saw Me Coming, a powerful new solo exhibition by acclaimed photographer, author, and activist Devin Allen. On view from September 26th through Friday, December 4th, the exhibition marks a deeply personal exploration of Allen’s family, memory, and Black domestic archives.

She Saw Me Coming traces Allen’s photographic lineage back to its original source: his grandmother. After moving into his family’s vacant ancestral home—a space that housed every member of his family at various points—Allen discovered hundreds of family photographs spanning from the 1970s through the 2000s.

“While working on the home-making changes and going through my Grandma’s things, I found numerous photo albums containing 100s of family images from around the 1970s-2000s,” says Devin Allen. “That’s when I realized that I have always been around photography, and my Grandma was the first photographer I ever knew.”

Supported by the Working Assumptions Project Grant, the exhibition evolved into an even deeper tribute following the tragic passing of Allen’s mother during its creation. Drawing inspiration from Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen Table series, Deborah Willis’s Reflections in Black, and Thomas Allen Harris’s film Through A Lens Darkly, Allen expanded the project to include a poignant series of self-portraits utilizing light and the empty spaces in his mother’s home where she often sat.

“The goal, of course, is to shine a light on my family, but I also aim to inspire people to share their family histories, archive our history, and protect it,” Allen adds. “Our stories are important.”
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This post is much later than it should have been, but even though it’s tardy I still wanted to take a moment and let everyone involved know that the grand opening night of the Work x Family photo exhibit at McCallum on April 23 was not just one of the most gratifying nights of my professional life. It was one of the most meaningful nights of my life.

The exhibit celebrated our 10 years of participating in the Work x Family national photo project, an incredible project that encourages students to document the themes of work and family in their own lives by taking autobiographical pictures and writing captions that explain how those pictures express the project themes of work and family.

Just putting the exhibit together was a worthwhile experience because I had never seen and appreciated the totality of how much great work McCallum students had done until we put in the work to assemble it and lay it all out. The exhibit was powerful, and even it was representative, not comprehensive.

I knew I was proud of the work the kids had done, but I did not realize the personal impact of having so many people I love and care about all in one space. There were so many dear former students who came back to Mac. My wife was there. So was one of my best college friends. All the wonderful students in Mr. Solis’s and Mr. Webster’s classes and their parents. The president of @WorkingAssumptions all the way from California. Fellow photographers in the Mac community. Even my in-laws checked the exhibit out when they were in town.

It was overwhelmingly touching and meaningful. To everyone—those shown in this post and those not shown in this post—who took the time to celebrate the amazing work of McCallum photojournalists over the past decade, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It was a night and an experience I will always cherish.

Photos by Rivers Newsum, Arwen Pelletier, me and all the wonderful people who grabbed my camera and snapped a pic so I could remember this event forever.

Congrats to Mr. Webster’s students who learned this month that they were the latest Work x Family winners. You all have started the next chapter. I can’t wait to resume it in the fall.

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I got to celebrate my birthday back home on the east coast during @photoville opening weekend. On my actual birthday, I found out ‘The scars of war’ had won the @aajaofficial Award of Excellence for photo story, which was so full circle because it was at an AAJA convention that I met @bptuazon and pitched her the story.

When I arrived in Jersey, my mom had set the table for four and had prepared a Korean feast, but it was just me. She looked behind me when I entered and I realized I had never come home alone before, since becoming a mom.

I finally got to meet my lovely editor @olivveee and she was even more amazing in person. I am so grateful to have worked with my incredible @cnn team again on this exhibition, adding new layers and meaning to this work. Thank you so much @brettr @hiccupbk. I’m so used to seeing my work on a small screen so to see it printed so big was refreshing. I saw new details I had never noticed before.

So grateful to the @photoville team for this experience. The curation was incredible, with John reaching up towards the sky, under a bridge, surrounded by birds. So many metaphors. The wind tried to knock it down but the work survived in another location.

When I took this image of John doing reverse warrior on his last day in uniform, it was a symbolic gesture I asked him to do. But since then, he’s been practicing yoga regularly so maybe it was also a kind of hope.

Thank you everyone for your kind messages and reflections on the story and exhibition. It was nourishing to see so many people I love and who have supported me in my life and career. And so inspiring to see all the beautiful and hard work everyone is doing, glimmers of light everywhere ✨Moving forward in gratitude.

1- 📷 @sophieupark
3&4- 📷 @shuranhuang
8&15- 📷 @mary.kang
9- My mom wanted to take a pic with the kimchi

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📸 Grant Opportunity for Photographers & Photo-Based Artists

Working Assumptions @workingassumptions is offering six unrestricted $10,000 grants supporting photography and photo-based projects exploring family, caregiving, and interdependence.

The opportunity is open to U.S.-based visual storytellers working across artistic, educational, therapeutic, and documentary contexts, with still photography serving as the primary medium.

Applications open May 1 and close June 1. Projects already in progress are eligible, and there is no application fee.

Selected projects will be announced in September 2026. For more information and application link go to the @workingassumptions page or workingassumptions.org

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This is a hardworking post combining a Spring 2026 photo dump with appreciation for @philaculturalfund and a call for more arts funding in our beautiful city. PCF’s funding is vital to the free and open to all programs we offer at Writers Room.

@phillymayor @phlcouncilprez @councilmemberjg

@philaculturalfund has been the largest funder of art and culture organizations in Philadelphia since 1991. And while essential support for art and culture funding across the country continues to be jeopardized, Our City has an opportunity to prioritize and value art and culture in the FY27 Budget.

As @ruephilacouncil said, when others step back, Philadelphia steps up. Invest $6 million in PCF.

Thank you for your support to our beautiful community.

#WeArePCF

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Hello everyone — a powerful new photography opportunity is now live on Avant Registry.

The Working Assumptions Project Grants are offering six $10,000 grants supporting visual storytelling projects that challenge perspectives and explore meaningful contemporary narratives through photography.

Open to photographers and visual storytellers worldwide, this opportunity is completely free to enter and designed to support bold, impactful creative work.

Deadline: June 1st, 2026

Comment “AVANT” for more information and application details.

#OpenCall #PhotographyGrant #VisualStorytelling #ContemporaryPhotography #AvantRegistry

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The Work x Family photo exhibit that was in the main hallway came down today. If your image is featured in this timeline and you would like have the print that appeared in the exhibit, please send me a DM to hold it for you or check with Mr. Solís in Room 134 this week and pick it up.

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“Fallen” (from the series Bad Dogs), by Phoebe Shuman-Goodier, Photography

Through deeply personal, collaborative assemblages built from the physical accumulation of her father’s hoarding disorder, Shuman-Goodier navigates the complex intersections of caregiving, memory, and familial bonds. This approach earned her a Working Assumptions Project Grant in 2025. @workingassumptions

The next deadline for the $10,000 Working Assumptions grant is June 1, 2026. No application fee.

If you are an artist, vetting strict foundation requirements shouldn’t be a full-time job. We built Art Goat to map your exact artistic practice to the world’s best funding.

It is completely free for artists.

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