Allen Frame 1951-ben született, Missisippiben. A Harvard Egyetem elvégzése után, 1977-ben New Yorkba költözött, s azóta ott él. 1981 óta számos önálló kiállítása volt Párizsban, New Yorkban, Zürichben és Budapesten is. Saját munkái bemu-tatása mellett több neves pályatársának ő rendezte a kiállításait mint kurátor, ezen kívül fotográfiát oktat a New York-i International Center of Photography és a School of Visual Arts nevű intézményekben, és rendszeresen publikál, többek között a The New York Times-ban is. Első albumát Németországban jelentette meg 2001-ben, Detour címmel.

Allen Frame, b. 1951, has been working in photography since 1972. He grew up in Mississippi and received a B.A. cum laude in General Studies from Harvard University. His first solo show in New York was in 1982. More recently, he has had solo exhibitions at Leslie Tonkonow Gallery in New York in 1997 and Schedler Galerie in Zurich in 2001. His book Detour, a compilation of work from the 1990', was published in Germany in 2001 by Kehrer Verlag Heidelberg and will be released in the U.S. in 2003, (although it is currently available in NYC bookstores.) He has also been the curator of many exhibitions, including the Darrel Ellis retrospective at Art in General in New York in 1996; an exhibition of emerging international photographers presented in 2000 in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg, Russia, through CEC International; and currently, ADVANCE NOTICE, an ICP alumni exhibition of the work of 35 photographers, which opened Sept. 12, 2002, at the International Center of Photography in New York. In 1993 he co-founded a not-for-profit contemporary art center in Memphis called Delta Axis, served on its Board of Directors, and was the curator of numerous exhibitions for it in the 1990's. Currently he serves on the Board of Directors of Art in General in New York, The Camera Club of New York, and is on the Advisory Committee of PS 122 Gallery in New York. In 1990 Allen Frame, with Nan Goldin and Frank Franca, created ELECTRIC BLANKET, a slide show about AIDS, which included the work of over 100 photographers, and toured, through an NEA grant, museums and art spaces in the U.S. and in many other countries, including Russia, Japan, Norway, Finland, Germany, England, Scotland, and Hungary. Frame is a former Board Member of Visual AIDS, and as part of a small group of artists in 1991, originated the Red Ribbon, (worn to signify compassion for people with AIDS and hope for a cure), which became the international iconic symbol for concern and activism about AIDS. Frame has had extensive experience in theater and performance, also. He performed and directed his experimental autobiographical photo-slide play, A Little Shadow, at the Scottish International Photo Festival called Fotofeis, in 1995, where he also had a solo show of his photographs. He received a Creative Time CityWide grant to direct and perform in an experimental play about AIDS called Private Public, which was performed on working New York subway trains in 1992. He has written articles and photographed for publications such as The New York Times, Die Zeit, and Bomb, for which he has been a Contributing Editor since 1982. In 1993 he was named Outstanding Photographer by the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, having had a solo exhibition that year at Delta State University. He has also received grants for his work from Art Matters (1989), Arts Link (1993, 2001), and the Peter Reed Foundation (1999). He teaches photography at the International Center of Photography, the School of Visual Arts, Pratt Institute, and this fall he is a guest artist at Cooper Union. He also teaches workshops at the Camera Club of NY, Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, and has taught photo workshops for three consecutive years in Russia in various cities.