f.y.i., 'rinne' is pronounced like 'wren' . . .

Rinne Allen is a photographer living in Athens, Georgia.
Working in both color and black&white, she photographs often
as a way to remember the things she sees and experiences.

Whether in images from her backyard garden or from as far away as India, she finds that beauty is in a detail, or in the movement or sway of something, and that it can be found all around us if we make the effort to look.

Born in Athens in 1973, Rinne studied photography and art at a small school on top of a mountain in Tennessee affectionately called Sewanee. She has traveled all over, lived for a time in Paris, and now enjoys living in and getting to know the place where she grew up. A small college town known for its thriving art & music scene, Athens provides a beautiful place to live and work, as well as a near year-round gardening calendar due to its mild clime.

Rinne also sews, and gets a lot of her inspiration {when she is indoors} from her pile of fabrics, trimmings, patterns, and handwork. Most of it is old and found, and all of shows the hand of the maker. This trace of a hand's signature is something she attempts to imprint on each photograph she makes.

Rinne and her husband, Lee, maintain the garden of former architect & landscape designer, the late Dr. John Linley, and have spent the last 13 years building on the legacy he left behind. Their most recent project is Rinne's new studio that opens onto the garden, and green-roofed coop for their three chickens. They just finished planting their summer crops in the veggie plot. Read more about their garden here.

Rinne feels very lucky to work with other artists too. She has photographed for r.wood studio for the last 12 years, and has worked with hable construction for the last five, as well as other independent, made-in-the-usa artisans such as alabama chanin...their beautiful, handmade work inspires her own, and together they create picture stories that are more closely related to installations, than product shots. She also co-curates beautyeveryday.com where she, kristen bach, and rebecca wood share their daily inspirations from around the south. Rinne and her sister, lucy, write & photograph for the wonderful british textile publication, selvedge. And rinne also photographs food & growers, because of her personal interest in gardening and growing.

She enjoys documenting process- the way things are made, and the hands & people that make them.