Background
Allan Porter was born on April 29, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He is the elder of three brothers born to parents of Russian-Jewish ancestry.
The University of the Arts
Allan Porter enrolled as a scholarship student in the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (now the University of the Arts). One of his study projects was to compose a cover for "Holiday" magazine (a magazine that he would later work for): the work was rejected by his teacher, but an amazingly similar cover appeared on the newsstands one month later. "Holiday" magazine cover in April 1953. Photo: Robert Capa.
Art Directors' Club award-winning Madison Avenue magazine cover. Photo: Allan Porter.
designer editor journalist Photographer
Allan Porter was born on April 29, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. He is the elder of three brothers born to parents of Russian-Jewish ancestry.
Allan Porter attending Stokely Elementary School then Blaine Junior High School. After graduating from Central High school in 1952, Allan Porter enrolled as a scholarship student at the Philadelphia Museum College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and studied graphic design, painting, photography, and art history.
During his education, he found employment in a darkroom, and through the same lab had his first exposure to lithography techniques. His studies were interrupted by army service from 1955 in German Aschaffenburg and Stuttgart; when his military service ended, he completed his last half-year of studies and graduated from the Philadelphia Museum with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He would return to Offenbach to attend the typography courses of Hans Schmidt. Allan weaved the first "Tower of Babel" tapestry in 1857, which would be shown at an exhibition for former Philadelphia Museum School students one year later.
Allan Porter returned to Philadelphia to work at "Holiday" magazine between 1957 and 1959 and edited the August edition of the latter year practically on his own: this was his first experience as an editor, and enacting his idea to present landscapes with no people for that issue led to his encounter with photographers Brett Weston and Ansel Adams, and Jack Kerouac and Truman Capote, writers for the magazine then.
All while serving as art director for Seventeen magazine from 1959, he took trips to Offenbach to complete two tapestries, "City of Non Dwellers" and "Four Seraphim Guarding the Cross", and would return yet again to complete "Kedosheem Tehehyoo" one year later. In 1959, Allan Porter presented his works for the first time in a group exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, was included in an American Federation of Arts-sponsored group tour, and again in a solo exhibition, accompanied by his etching and lithography work, at the 'America' magazine's 106 West 56th Street, New York City America House. He also worked for "Madison Avenue" magazine that year and would win the Art Direction and Photo prize from the Art Directors Club the year after.
Allan Porter finally moves from Philadelphia to New York City in 1963 and became involved in the beat generation scene and artists such as Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Robert Frank, Leroi Jones, Edward Dahlberg. After Kennedy's assassination that year, and friend-photographer Horst H. Baumann's proposition to do the layout for his upcoming book, "The New Matadors", brought him to Lucerne, Switzerland and the Bucher editing company, the publishers of Camera magazine.
Camera magazine, begun by engineer Adolf Herz and book-publisher C. J. Bucher in June 1922. Bucher's wife, Alice, who took over the publisher role after her husband's stroke in 1841, tried a series of editors after Herz had stopped editing the magazine from 1947, but when the magazine found itself in difficulty in the mid-1960s, she thought that Allan Porter's insightfulness and 'foreign touch' would bring a fresh start to the magazine. First appearing in December 1965 as guest editor, he became editor in chief of Camera magazine from the following year. Allan Porter began a campaign to increase readership through subscriptions, namely those of libraries and other international institutions and negotiated an increased US circulation. From its 1965 circulation of 9,300, he had promised an 8% increase in readership, but it had already increased by 20% at the end of his first year.
Allan Porter helped launch the career of many now-renowned photographers, namely Josef Koudelka (1974), Stephen Shore, and Sarah Moon. Porter's Camera was also the first to showcase the more experimental work of photography's greats, such as Richard Avedon's 'Jacob Israel Avedon' series on his (dying) father that appeared in November 1974. After a successful run of 16 years, the last issue of Camera magazine appeared on the 1st of December, 1981.