Family Diary 2026

Jamie M. Allen is the Stephen B. and Janice G. Ashley Curator and Head of the Department of Photography at the George Eastman Museum. She has been with the museum for over 18 years. Allen has curated exhibitions such as Zig Jackson: The Journey of Rising Buffalo (2025), Life with Photographs: 75 Years of the Eastman Museum (2024–25), Selections from the Collection (2023–25); Adam Ekberg: Minor Spectacles (2023) Perspectives: Recent Gifts of Contemporary Art (2022), Anastasia Samoylova: FloodZone (2022), Jess Dugan: To Survive on this Shore (2022), Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory (2019–21), Nathan Lyons: In Pursuit if Magic (2019), #LarsonShindelman #Mobilize (2019); A History of Photography(2018); Photography and America’s National Parks (2016), In the Garden (2015), Astro-Visions (2013), and Between the States: Photographs of the American Civil War (2011). Her books include Bea Nettles: Harvest of Memory (University of Texas Press, 2019), Nathan Lyons: In Pursuit of Magic (University of Texas Press, 2019), The Photographer in the Garden (Aperture, 2018), Picturing America’s National Parks (Aperture, 2016), and the essay “From Vision to Reality: A Transition from Pictorialism to Modernism” in Imogen Cunningham (TF Editores/D.A.P, 2012/2013). Allen grew up in Tempe, Arizona. She holds an M.A. in photographic preservation and collections management from Toronto Metropolitan University in coordination with the George Eastman Museum, as well as a B.A. in art history and a B.F.A. in photography from the University of Arizona, Tucson.