Allan Dinkoff grew up in Valley Stream, a working-class suburb of New York City on the South Shore of Long Island. Before going to college, Allan attended the Arts Students League of New York. He continued to draw and paint throughout college, graduating in 1977 with a degree cum laude from Drew University. Allan decided to pursue a career in law, and graduated in 1980 from Hofstra Law School; he was the Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review and the faculty voted him the outstanding graduate of his class.
During his forty-two year career as a lawyer, Allan was a partner and of counsel at prestigious New York City law firms and held senior in-house counsel roles at a number of global companies, including Merrill Lynch, where he was a Managing Director, and Amgen, where he was Associate General Counsel. He published and lectured extensively on legal ethics, class actions, and employment law. Allan has served on the boards of directors of the American Employment Law Council and Long Beach Opera in Los Angeles, California. He currently is a member of the Board of Trustees of Glimmerglass Festival and an Adjunct Professor of Law at Hofstra. He is enrolled in the Narrative Medicine Program at Columbia University.
Allan retired from the active practice of law in 2023, and has returned to his artistic endeavors, focusing on photography. He has studied with Sam Abell and taken numerous courses at the international Center of Photography in New York City, including classes with Marion Durand, Stephen Ferry, Lisa Kessler, Karen Marshall, and Harvey Stein.
Allan's photography is driven by his view that every photo has been taken, but not every story has been told. He is a 2025 graduate of ICP's Documentary Practice: Visual Storytelling Program, where he developed a project titled Targeted: Portraits of Civil Servants Under Trump. Through interviews and environmental portraits, the project gives voice to the lived experiences of sixty-five civil servants at nineteen agencies who were fired from their jobs by the Trump Administration or who left their job because of what was going on at their agency.
Other long-term projects that Allan is pursuing since picking up his camera in 2023 are documenting the multi-racial community of Huntington, New York, where he currently lives; street performers in New York City and around the world; street portraits focused on people who are alone in the urban landscape; and the abstract modern art found in the infrastructure of major cities.
Contact info:
adinkoff@gmail.com
917-539-0787