The Red Bulletin September 2020 (UK)

“I’m always careful not to be preachy
about social or political issues,” he says.
“Everyone has an idea of what migration
means, and I don’t dictate. I show them
my experience as I’ve documented it,
and we have a conversation. This project
is primarily about me understanding the
complex reality of people who have to
escape very difficult situations. The real
objective has always been for me to
become a better person.”
Allison’s passion for this subject
started when he was young. Born in
Manchester, Allison moved with his
family to Mexico – the birthplace of his
mother – when he was three. Allison
was curious, his parents liberal. “My
mum’s only rules were that I couldn’t
take drugs or join the Nazi party,” says
Allison, now 38. So he started exploring
’90s Mexico City. “At 16 or so, I’d take
my parents’ camera and photograph
graffiti. I’d go to train yards on the
outskirts of the city to paint trains.
I’d notice people travelling on the tops
of these trains, which run between
Mexico, the US and Canada.”
Allison’s own journey has been
anything but straightforward. He’s
been imprisoned in both the UK and
the US, and held at gunpoint in Mexico
– distressing episodes that have informed
and shaped his current work. “Having
my liberty taken from me made me
realise how important being creative is,”
he says. “Art is freedom. I was free even
then, because I was able to use my head.”
Allison was first sent to prison in 2012,
a decade after returning to the UK to
discover the graffiti scene and study
documentary photography. “London’s
energy was inspiring,” he says. “Graffiti
belongs to urban environments, and I was
seriously into it. It’s the adrenalin, the
rebelliousness, the creativity, the curiosity.
Graffiti has been a great educator for me.
I’ve never seen it as destructive.”
But, in the run-up to the Olympic
Games, London police were
cleaning up. Allison was given
a 19-month jail sentence – six of
which would be served in HM Prison
Wormwood Scrubs – for tagging trains.
“I don’t see graffiti as a criminal act,”
he says. “But I always knew that
prosecution was possible. It was about
completing the sentence so I could
leave and start a new life.”
While he was inside, Allison
collaborated with his photographer
sister, Roxana, on a creative project
about the experience. He read, wrote
and drew. “I just wanted to be locked in
my cell,” he says. “I had so much to do.
I didn’t want to waste time.”
Allison says he left more serious,
more solitary and less restless. He
stopped doing graffiti. He ran a lot. He
continued to work on projects around
migration and identity, while working
several different jobs in London,
including roles at charities Amnesty
International and Action Aid. His idea
for the project in Mexico began to form.
“I realised I wanted to go back,
to apply my knowledge from those
charities,” he says. “I was very motivated
to start from scratch there.” In 2016,
he moved back to Mexico City to begin
photographing the landscapes visible
to migrants when they travel by train,
a single project he thought would be
done within a year, but which has now
morphed into two projects across three
countries, which are still ongoing,
almost four years later.
Allison soon experienced first-hand
the vulnerability of the people travelling
these routes. “One train won’t take you
from south to north,” he says. “You have
to understand the route you’re taking,
you have to get on and off. These freight
“We should celebrate migration and understand it not as
a problem but as a phenomenon. Trump’s idea that they’re
all criminals, it’s rubbish”
Brave statement: a tribute to the Migrantes Valientes. The tombstones display the names of some of the migrants’ countries of birth
46 THE RED BULLETIN