Wisdom Cries in the Streets | Khalik Allah & Adama Jalloh

Khalik Allah

Khalik Allah

Eddie Otchere curates a street photography exhibition, Wisdom Cries in the Streets, that brings together two gifted photographers Khalik Allah from Harlem and Adama Jalloh from Peckham.

Within urban society there are a multitude of street photographers watching communities go about their daily grind, collecting evidence that illustrates a belief about their urban realities. For this exhibition, we literally scoured the globe to find the best examples of contemporary, progressive street photography.

Khalik Allah, who Time.com has called “Harlem’s official street photographer,” has been photographing on the corner of 125th and Lexington, at night, since 2012. Armed with a Nikon FM2 and a few rolls of film, he produces work that sits at the intersection of street photography and environmental portraiture. His subjects are framed within the landscape of life on the margins, defined by sidewalks, bus lanes and cladding.

Adama Jalloh’s photographs are an act of socio-political defiance in the face of preconceived ideas about working class communities and post-colonial migration. Through her work, she fights preconceived notions and presents a more honest picture of South London life.

Jalloh and Allah have never met in person, although they are governed by the same photographic ideals. Both are traditionalists in their choice of cameras and film. They lean on the portrait as a means of enfranchising their street-framed subjects. However, their imagery is starkly divergent. Allah captures his street at night, his hunting ground being a single block in Harlem. Jalloh shoots by day on the roads between Brixton and Peckham. It’s in this contrast that we can begin to access the street, how it is documented and to perhaps consider the world as one sprawling human hinterland.