John Allison is a photographer and has lived in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood since 1988, originally hailing from Sackville, New Brunswick. After completing studies in commercial photography at the Dawson Institute of Photography in Montreal in 1985, he became a photographic printer after discovering he had a keen eye for colour. This culminated in the early 1990s with him being the printer for Jeff Wall’s backlit Cibachrome images.
After seeing a demonstration of Adobe Photoshop in 1992, John became an early adopter of digital imaging. He’s been using Photoshop since version 2.01, and over a number of years has used a variety of software including Fractal Painter and Live Picture. Allison had digital art pieces included on the official releases of Adobe Photoshop versions 4 and 5. His digital images have appeared in many magazines including Computer Artist, Photo Digest, and Photo Life. In 2002, he was the grand prize winner of the Digital Art show sponsored by Seybold Seminars in San Francisco.
With the introduction of better quality digital cameras in the mid 2000s, Allison returned to photography with a simpler more stripped down approach. Since that time he has been documenting the disappearing aspects of Vancouver, and Mount Pleasant in particular. A strong sense of place has always been a key component in his photography. An inspiration for Allison’s work is photographer Saul Leiter who once said “I take photographs in my neighborhood. I think that mysterious things happen in familiar places.”