MySide: Michele Allan

For our first #MySide interview of 2026, we're excited to share our conversation with Michele Allan, a documentary photographer based in the North East of England. After completing a postgraduate diploma in photojournalism at the London College of Printing, Allan returned to the region and began working as a university photographer, continuing to develop her own documentary projects alongside this role.

That dual position, working within an institution while maintaining an independent practice, has shaped a way of photographing that is attentive, patient, and rooted in lived experience rather than spectacle. Her images are made from within public events, not outside them, and are concerned with how people occupy shared spaces together.

Reflecting on images shared under our open call MySide: Ways We Celebrate, Allan takes us behind the scenes on the decisions and judgments that underpin her work, and on what photographing public gatherings and communities can reveal about collective identity and belonging in the North East.

Side: When you arrive at a large public event, what are the first practical decisions you make about where to stand, how close to work, and how to begin photographing?

Michele Allan: On first arriving I’ll spend some time watching before starting to take up a position or start taking any photographs. This gives me a general sense of what is happening and helps me to work out the best place to be in order to get some images. I tend to start off with some close- up shots so I’ll get as close to the action as possible. I feel the opportunity to capture these close-up shots can be very fleeting as it’s a very dynamic environment. I’ll work quite intently at this time. The more wide-angle shots I will leave until later when things are a bit less hectic and there is less pressure to capture a particular moment.

Technicalities like the position of the sun also come into play.

Side: In the Royal County Hotel image, the central figure remains outside the frame and the photograph is built around people looking and reacting. What does that decision allow the photograph to do?

Michele: I feel it focusses attention on the audience and their reactions to the whole experience. It draws the viewer in to the photograph and makes it more of a shared experience.

Side: Many of these images hold several actions at once rather than isolating a single moment. How do you think about structure and balance when working with that level of visual complexity?

Michele: I’m not in control of what is happening so I tend to spend time looking to see how things are developing. There is often a lot happening in these kinds of photographs and I don’t want the image to end up ‘messy’ with the viewer not knowing where to look. So, I try to simplify the image as much as possible and I feel that having something for the viewer to anchor on achieves this. I’ll therefore walk around looking for something to anchor everything together. For example, this could be the reaction of a particular individual, or simply something stationary in the background. I think experience and patience plays their part here as things often seem to just fall into place.  If they don’t then I’ll tend not to take the photo. 

Side: Across the work you shared with us, you shift between wide, descriptive views and more compressed, charged frames. What prompts that change in approach while you’re working?

Michele: I tend to take the close-up shots first as I feel there is more urgency to capture these and then move on to more wider establishing shots. When taking the closer shots I’m more focussed on that smaller environment and tend not to see much outside of that. The wider shots help establish context which is useful if I then decide that the photos work better as a cohesive body. But when taking these shots I’m still constantly watching and responding to what is happening before me which will often resulting in me moving between the two depending on what I’m seeing.

Side: You’ve used both colour and black and white across these photographs. What different work do those choices do for you in scenes like these?

Michele: I’m old enough to have started photographing on film where the choice was often an economic one. It was simply cheaper to use black and white film. I do still love black and white and I think a lot of images lend themselves to being black and white. I like how it gives simplicity to the image. I do feel however that some of the shots I’m taking naturally lend themselves to being in colour. Shooting digitally in colour, especially in raw file format, I feel gives me the best of both worlds. I tend to know if an image is going to work better as one or the other when I’m taking it but there have been times when I have been pleasantly surprised when I have come to edit them.

Side: Phones are a constant presence in these images. When everyone around you is also recording, what are you looking for that sits outside the obvious or the spectacular?

Michele: I’m more interested in how people are reacting to these events and capturing these emotions than witnessing the event itself. In a way I suppose I’m also documenting others carrying out their own documentation.

Side: The Miners’ Gala photographs are made in residential streets as well as in the city. How does photographing the event in these everyday spaces affect the way it reads as documentary?

Michele: The work in the residential streets is documenting a community event that takes place in the heart of a community. Local involvement for example often includes local school children proudly parading banners they have been working on in the weeks running up to the event. It is a much more personal and intimate documentary body of work. I can literally be taking a photo from someone’s doorstep. The photos in the city of Durham itself show a bringing of people together to celebrate a more organised spectacle.

Side: You’re photographing events where people are already performing, watching, and being watched. How do you understand your role as a photographer within that mix?

Michele: I think my role is simply to be an observer who is documenting the event.

Side: When you come to edit work from crowded, fast-moving situations like these, what tells you an image is doing enough to stand on its own?

Michele: The context of the image shouldn’t need to be explained to the viewer. The way the image captures the viewer’s attention through, for example an expression, a gesture or its composition should be enough to capture and maintain the viewer’s interest. If it can do that then I feel the image is capable of standing on it own.

Side: Looking across these photographs now, what do you think they say about how communities in the North East choose to mark history, identity, and belonging in public?

Michele: I think it’s about people wanting to come together to share moments like these. It’s not just a case of continuing a long tradition. It’s about sharing the common pride they have in their history.

Side: Thanks so much Michele!