At the 1974 AAACE meeting in Indiana, 93-year-old John Allen showed up and took a bow

Reeder, R. L.

English

Kansas State University

Journal of Applied Communications Volume 59 Issue 1 Article 3 Photos by J. C. Allen & Son R. L. Reeder Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/jac This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Reeder, R. L. (1976) "Photos by J. C. Allen & Son," Journal of Applied Communications: Vol. 59: Iss. 1. https://doi.org/10.4148/1051-0834.1945 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Applied Communications by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact cads@k-state.edu. Photos by J. C. Allen & Son Abstract At the 1974 AAACE meeting in Indiana, 93-year-old John Allen showed up and took a bow. This article is available in Journal of Applied Communications: https://newprairiepress.org/jac/vol59/iss1/3 J. C. Allen with Press Graflex __ iii itc:hell auto, 1919. IIHave Camera, Will Travel"-and He Did, for Photos by J. C. Allen & Son R. l. Reeder At the 1974 AAACE meeting in Indiana , 93-year-old John Allen showed up and took a bow. He didn't need th e publicity-he and his pictures had been recognized many times-but it was a lie back 35 years to the previous AAACE meeting at Purdue. Then Tom Johnson had asked John to judge the visuals contest and give a talk about taking pictures. John said coming back made hi m feel good "after allihese years to have AAACE members make a fuss over an old photographer. '· Partly as a result of that visit , John and Chester have given the agricul-hlral information department their invaluable collect ion of negatives that show Purdue during the 40 years they were on campus. Some of the pictures on these pages are from that file , and the others a re favorites of John , loaned to ACE for this occas ion. Like John , they have an ageless quality about them. JANUARY-MARCH 1976 9 1Reeder: Photos by J. C. Allen & SonPublished by New Prairie Press, 2017For 65 years the J. C. Allen & Son mark on a farm life photograph has meant quality. Now at 94 John sti11 keeps office ho ms and is likely to answer if you dial thei r number. Occasionall y he will get out a camera and shoot again, but most of the pictures are now taken by Chester, who has been taking them since he was old enough to hold a camera. Before that he and his sister were the prime subjects of many of the Allen photographs, often in association with an imals. Asked how he became such a remarkable photographer of subjects hard to take, John says simply, "Poverty. All I had in the beginning was knowledge of agricu lture and the necessity to work." He had one other thi ng-his wife's camera. He had given her, before they were married, a 4x5 Eastman, a rare machine in those days. After she had learned to use it, she taught John how to take and pri nt his own pictures. His knowledge of agricu lture came from working on a farm for 10 years as a boy in an orphanage near Knightstown , Indiana. Then after a st int of railroad ing, he came to Purdue as an assistant in the animal husbandry department. There he found that very few good animal pictures were being taken and decided to improve on the situation with a Graflex that the department owned. After that, he found that farm publicat ions would pay for such pictu res and augment his meager salary. He was in business. The first J . C. Allen sale was ofa calf head to Hoard's Dai ryman for 50¢. Then Art Page of Prairie Farmer began to buy some cover pictures and Breeder's Gazette became a good customer. With in a few years his photo-graphs were showing up regularly in other national farm magazines. One of his early sales was a picture of a small chi ld with a small gOat to Country Gentleman. He became most proud of his work wit h children, where animals and children could be brough t together . . , A pict ure needs to be catchy," he says. "It needs human interest of the kind that makes YOll want to look again." First you need to love the kids, then find something interesting for them to do , study the light to be sure it's coming from the right direction to make the kind of reproduction you want. That's how John says to do it. By 1915 John's pictures were becoming known and Ohio State as ked him to come over and take 10,000 pictures of Ohio agriculture along with a full-lime job as photographer. That caused Agriculture Dean G. I. Christie to ask that he become the official Purdue photographer, ajob he held unti l 1951. He thought he was reti ring then at the age of 70. Since that time the Aliens have made a lot of money from assignment photography , but their fortu ne has been in thei r files . If they see something "catchy," they grab a camera and take a picture for later use because , as 10 ACE QUA RTERLY 2Journal of Applied Communications, Vol. 59, Iss. 1 [1976], Art. 3https://newprairiepress.org/jac/vol59/iss1/3DOI: 10.4148/1051-0834.1945A. Tom Johnston , long·time Purdue editor, gives a fishing demonstration at the 1939 '--~"". AAACE meeting. B. Purdue ' s great basketball coach , Ward Lambert, glVlRg AII·American Johnny Wooden a few pointers in 1930. C. Earl Butz at his ag econ desk in 1948. D. Chester as a young model for his Dad. E. Chester's son, in turn , becomes a model with friends. F. Young Mary Elizabeth Skinner , whose father was dean of agriculture of Purdue. II 3Reeder: Photos by J. C. Allen & SonPublished by New Prairie Press, 2017Chester says , "even the best editor may not know exactly what he wants unt il he sees it printed." Obviously it takes years to build this kind offile. "You shoot what looks good, " Chester says , "then wait un til someone likes the same picture you did. ,. Along the way, John 's camera has brought him an honorary membershi p in the Agricultural Ed itors Associat ion , a distinguished service award from Purdue Ag Alumni , the Ki wanis legion of honor award for service to community and country , travel in the U.S., Europe, and the Soviet Union. In his time off he has been an avid fisherman, golfer, and bowler. As for Chester, he started out to be a writer but found that his kind of journal ism had to sell immediately, but pictures could wait . " A photograph can be taken as the inspirat ion hits , and be good for five or ten years," he says. "But getting into photography is like getting into other kinds of editorial work. You usually don 'tjump out of school and become an editor ofa magazine. It takes some time , particularly our kind of photography. If YOll like to take pictures , you will take them when you see them, knowing that the good ones will stay good." Chester says his best course at Purdue was one in flower arrangement, in whic h he learned the various kinds of composit ion. "You imagine what you want to get in your picture , finally see it in front of the camera , and that's the time to push the button. " Like other kinds of business , pictu re taki ng goes through phases. A dozen years ago the Aliens comment that the fad was for putting filters on everything. If you happened to like getting things in focus, a filte r would help get rid of it. Now they gel a lot of requests for nude pictures. " That's one way 10 avoid the perpetual problem of women 's clothes going out of style in the file pictures ," they say , "but we can't comply. " John shot in black and while , but now Chester must shoot mostly in color because the magazines and advertis ing agencies want color even though it is more expensive. "That means plenty oflight ," Chester says . "You can shoot color under any kind of cond it ion , bu t the customer may nOI remember six months from now what kind of day it was when he insisted on shoot ing. " Black and wh ites could be improved usually by some manipu lation in the developing, but color has to be "right on the nose." That seems to be the way to stay in the picture business. Catchy and right on the nose. 12 ACE QUARTERLY 4Journal of Applied Communications, Vol. 59, Iss. 1 [1976], Art. 3https://newprairiepress.org/jac/vol59/iss1/3DOI: 10.4148/1051-0834.1945

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