Borderlines by Terry Allen

By Bryan on August 22, 2013.

Here’s a reason to go to the hospital – stat: Terry Allen’s exhibit of photography from around the planet ends Monday morning at Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin. Get there to see these images. (You don’t even need health insurance.)

Terry is a writer, artist, and astute observer of human nature. In these images you’ll discover people at ease before the US invaded Iraq; you’ll feel stark, desperate beauty expressed in granite and water; and you’ll vibrate with the kinetic energy from the streets of New York or the cafés of Paris.

Terry, a dear friend, has watched the world through a lens throughout her life, starting with travels around Asia, including six years in Japan, and several months in China just after Mao’s death. She continued snapping pictures while working as a journalist covering the wars that devastated Central America during the 1980s and as part of a medical assessment team on the eve of the Iraq invasion. She documents people and cultures on the edges of society and the cusp of change. “But all that aside,” she says, “ I just love the act of taking pictures, and the illusion of stopping time.”

Terry’s exhibit comes down Monday morning. But here’s the good news until then: the hospital lobby is open 24 hours.