The Old Farmhouse at Abken Airport

When Warner Kenyon and L. D. Abernathy founded Abken Aviation Co., in 1944, they acquired a dairy farm located at Worthington, Greenup County, Kentucky, to build Abken Airport. The farmhouse on the premises was abandoned subsequent to the purchase and gradually deteriorated over time. The photographs here were taken in July 1961, probably with the Kodak-35 range-finder camera my father had given me, using Kodak Ektachrome reversal film. By 2012 the colors had faded and shifted to an unpleasant reddish tone.  After digitizing the slides, I used an online application known as Gimp to convert the images to more pleasing monochrome.

General view of the two-story farmhouse, looking East.  At right, Abken's T-hangars, still standing and occupied in 2012.

Front porch of the farmhouse, looking East..  At left, Abken's T-hangars.

Even at the age of twenty, I was aware of the importance of composition in photography.  Here the image is broken into two equal parts.  On the right, a series of the horizontals is highlighted by a circle--the empty housing of an electricity meter.  On the left, verticals lead the eye to the T-hangars in the background.

  

View of the pantry and kitchen.  At right, orange trumpet flower vines.

Back door of the farmhouse. A study in verticals highlighted by the diagonal of the torn down screen and the arc of the sprung doorspring. These photographs are very much in the spirit of Walker Evans  [1903-1975], with whose work I was familiar.
View Walker Evans images in the Met.
 View and purchase Walker Evans works on Artsy.net.

View from the farmhouse, looking North.  In the middle ground, the asphalted runway. In the background, on the other side of the Ohio River [not visible] is U.S. Highway 52.  The hills had been truncated in order to facilitate the widened highway.

Copyright © 2012, 2017 Ronald W. Kenyon. Warning: this blog is protected under copyright. Do not plagiarize!