[1] Allan has become an influential public speaker and has been invited to be a part of many discussions on feminist politics and present a number of speeches held in galleries across Australia about art photography during the 1970s.
[4] However she felt it was impossible to make a living off art and only began taking photographs in 1974 after joining a feminist collective in Melbourne, and was taught how to process photos by housemate Virginia Coventry.
[6] This is a technique that was used to 'colour' black-and-white portraits and wedding photos up to the 1970s before the availability of cheap C-type prints from logout negatives, and revived by artist-photographers in the early 2000s.
This extended the longevity of any existing colours in the image and personalized the work, and made the photograph a means of creative expression.
In close-up photographs of elderly people, Allan highlighted the physical ageing process which can be regarded as unattractive by society.
The body of this work, exhibited at the NGV in 1980 by curator Jennie Boddington, focused on the industrial devastation of the coastline, raising awareness of the impact it has on daily life.
[11][12] In 2010, Allan returned to Botany Bay with a partner, Steenus von Steensen, to find that not a lot had changed from her first visit in 1980, instead the area appeared more dire and grim than it had before.
[12] In 2022, Allan's work, Micky's Room, featured in Part One of the exhibition, "Know my name: Australian women artists 1900 to now" at the National Gallery of Australia.