Khalik Allah

Born in 1985, Khalik Allah is a Jamaican-American photographer and director who lives and works in New York City. He started filming on the street at the age of 19 with a Hi-8 camcorder and has since worked in both photography and video, having become renowned for portraying people in urban and marginalised contexts.

In 2010, he released his first documentary Popa Wu: A 5% Story. His second feature film Field Niggas (2015) consists of a series of interviews and observations recorded at night on a street corner in Harlem, New York, in which he defiantly represents lives that seldom play a leading role. In 2017, Allah published “Souls Against the Concrete”, a book of photographs taken in Harlem between 2012 and 2016. In 2018, he directed the acclaimed film Black Mother, which he presented at LEFFEST the following year, and in 2020 he released IWOW: I Walk on Water, in which he has continued his polyphonic portrait work, this time in New York, Brussels and Amsterdam.