Francesca Allen'Alida', 2024 My sister Alida, as part of our ongoing collaboration, in the bath in Portugal. British photographer Francesca Allen earned her degree in Photography at London College of Communication and is based in London. Francesca uses her camera as a tool for intimacy. Exploring the nature of intimate femalefriendships, her images hold a mirror to our own personal relationships with those closest to us. This approach is typified by her debut publication Aya, published by Libraryman in 2018.Spending a month in Japan with the book’s namesake, Japanese musician Aya Yanase (also known as Aya Gloomy), the two women do not share a common language but do everything together. Their friendship blooms through the medium of Francesca’s photography. I’d like to get to know you, published and exhibited in March 2022, exemplifies Francesca's craft. Exploring the evolving relationship between herself and younger sister Alida over a summer in Devon, this second monograph documents the sisters tiptoeing around each other with a palpable tension, a push and a pull, opening up and later holding back. Stand out commissions include a project with British Journal of Photography, where Francesca travelled out to California to photograph 50 subjects across the state’s remotest regions. The resulting body of work, Women of California, paints a vivid and sun-soaked picture of female closeness, and the rituals that help to nurture these bonds. Francesca has been commissioned to bring her vision to editorial titles and brands such as Adidas, American Vogue, Dazed, Diane von Furstenberg, i-D, Levi's, Love, Stella McCartney and Twin Magazine.
