A Photographer’s Life: Cars and Dolls

West Coast photographer Allen R. Kuhn spent his youth photographing models, buzzing around Southern California in an Abarth Zagato, became a noted race photographer, found a career at Hughes Aircraft, married the girl of his dreams…and that was just the beginning.

Story and photos by Allen R. Kuhn

Unlike many car enthusiasts, my interest in sports cars was not influenced by my parents. Their style in cars was a 1928 Ford that they drove to Yosemite National Park for their honeymoon. They did, however, support my photo interests by naming me the ‘Official Family Photographer.’ In 1954, when I was 16, I found a copy of Argosy magazine (a men’s magazine of the day) with an article about Sebring. It had a fantastic two-page spread on Juan Manuel Fangio driving a Lancia D24, taken at dusk. It was an extreme pan shot. You could almost feel the sensation of speed with the blurred background and sharp looking car. That’s the style I wanted to achieve.

But there was another magazine, another angle.

On the cover of the September 1955 issue of U.S. Camera was a seductive picture of Anita Ekberg. Inside I found an article by Peter Gowland, noted glamour and pin-up photographer. Gowland was a hero to all the male students at the photo school I went to. The article illustrated ten ways you could photograph the female form. Also, in 1955 there was a TV show staring Bob Cummings, called “Love that Bob”, about a young photographer who only shot beautiful women. Therefore, another hero. Race cars and girls; I thought those were two subjects worth looking into. I was drawn to both. A year after photographing my first race at Torrey Pines I bought a 1952 MG TD and enrolled in a photography school, the Los Angeles Trade Technical Junior College, where we were taught how to photograph beautiful female models.

These were class projects and involved going to various locations around Los Angeles, including the Harold Lloyd Estate and Paradise Cove, with models furnished by the instructor. We photographed the girls and gave them prints for their portfolios in exchange for their posing for us to hone our skills. Our instructor happened to have connections with the Hollywood Studio Club. It was a chaperoned dormitory for young women involved in the motion picture business. Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak were residents there, but I didn’t get to photograph them!

The models were very easy to talk with, and if they liked your work, would be interested in a date. Funnily enough, most of those dates ended when they got all the pictures they needed. For a feature called Miss California Sports Car Magazine, I would ask a model from an agency to accompany me to some kind of car related business. In 1964 I went to the Rootes Group dealer that had two of the first three Sunbeam Tigers. I had the model drape herself all over the Tiger. A zillion years later I had a booth at the Monterey Historics and had the photo on display. It was then that I found out that particular Tiger was the one that Ken Miles built and the current owner lived in Colorado. I was able to contact him and sold him a print.

Forget the girls, tell us how you became a race photographer

My first race was October 23, 1955, on an overcast day at Torrey Pines, just north of San Diego. I had to cajole my mother to go for a “Sunday Drive”, as people did in those days, to San Diego. To my “surprise” there was a sports car road race at Torrey Pines. We got in, and I shot up a whole roll of 24 exposure Kodachrome from the family Kodak Pony camera that day.

In my quest for the perfect racing image, I found myself back at Torrey Pines on January 15, 1956. This is the image that really hooked me on sports car photography. I won a prize in Kodak photo contest with it.

Below is another very special image for me as it was the one that caught the attention of Richard Sherwin, editor of the Los Angeles magazine, Sports Car Journal. I had earlier sent them 8×10’s from a couple of races in hopes they would use them. I was always too late for their deadline. Richard, along with the noted author of dozens of sports car books, Art Evans, started the magazine as a college project in March of 1955.

A Career, a Degree, a Wife

I graduated from photography school in 1957 and found a job as assistant to a studio photographer. My first real photographer job, as an assistant to the chief photographer at Max Factor Cosmetics in Hollywood. We photographed more beautiful women, but also a lot of static shots of cosmetic items, not as exciting. The job ran the gamut from darkroom to studio shooting.

While there, my draft number was coming up in 1960. I decided this would be a good time to take a road trip in the TD. I quit my job and headed north on Highway 1, a great ride in a sports car, all the way to the Washington state line. When I got back home, I put the TD up on blocks in a neighbor’s garage thinking I would not be able to use it in basic training. It was off to the draft medical exam. One of the doctors discovered I had a heart murmur which put an end to my getting drafted.

I thought I best find employment to support the Fiat Abarth Zagato which had replaced the MG. I took a job at NCR (National Cash Register) in their photo department. I was in the Computer Storage Device Division. After a short time, (how many different ways can you shoot a computer) I was gone. A friend of mine got me into the data processing section at Hughes Aircraft Company, Satellite Division. I decided to go to college after this career moved me out of the photographic field and graduated with a Business Degree (Cum Laude, I’ll have you know.) I moved up to the Forecasting and Planning Department. The duties there were to contact the engineers designing and building communication satellites and work on the budgets and manpower forecasts. At that time they were finishing up the Surveyor 1 spacecraft which made the first successful soft-landing on the moon. These were really exciting times as Hughes was the leader in commercial communication satellites, and had many government contracts.

It was at Hughes Aircraft where I met my Beautiful Wife to be, Carole. We met at an ice-skating party, noticeable in her very tight form fitting black ski pants and sweater. I did not get to see her much as there seemed to always be some guys around her. But after one phone call to Carole, a date, and I knew she was the one. I stayed at Hughes for 27 years until the big aerospace layoffs of 1993. I did get full retirement pay. Still being a young lad, I hooked up with an employment agency for temp jobs. I worked temp jobs for about seven more years until it was time to really retire.

I had stopped shooting races because by 1965 things had really begun to change for me. I married my Beloved Carole and exchanged the Abarth for a Barracuda with automatic. Driving a stick with fifty-cent piece size pedals and thin sole shoes made shifting an ordeal in the ever-increasing traffic in L.A. Another reason I stopped shooting was because my photographer pass source had dried up. But the main reason I stopped was because the cars became too technical for my tastes. Gone were the cars I grew up with in the late 1950s to early ’60s, such as Ferrari, Maserati, Porsche, Jaguar, Mercedes, and the most beautiful of all, the Scarab. These were sculptures with graceful lines that have adorned many museums.

Though my shooting days of sports car racing were over I would keep the negatives; no photographer would ever get rid of his work. I secured an empty Kodak 250 sheet 8×10 Polycontrast III RC F Glossy Paper Box to store the negatives in. I hermetically sealed the box and put it in a secure dry-walled cabinet in my garage for storage. They did not see the glare of an enlarger bulb for the next 35 years. Until, that is, Carole and I happened upon a vintage car race in the 1990s.

If you would like to see more of my work, a trip to my website is do: www.vintage-sportscar-photos.com is in order. Many thanks for getting this far. Those were the days my Friends.

Next: Part 2: Resurgence