DukeMed Alumni News
Summer 2008

Photography a People Connection for Allen

by Marty Fisher

"Where I’ve Been” is the title of one of
forty black and white photographs exhibited this spring by Nancy Allen, MD, HS’78-’82 at the Kirby Gallery in Roxboro, N.C. Against the backdrop of a windswept hill, the rear-view mirror image of a long straight dirt road leads into the distant rural landscape.

Allen took this photo along with many others during a 120-mile solitary wander around the perimeter of rural Person County one Saturday morning. A collection of her photos
is permanently displayed in the Specialty Clinic waiting room at Person Memorial Hospital, where she sees patients two days per month as part of her faculty appointment in Medicine/ Rheumatology at Duke.

Several of her photos can be viewed online by Clicking Here.

Inspired by her father, accomplished nature photographer Paul Bates of Midlothian, Virginia, Allen has been a hobbyist photographer all her adult life. When her children left home for college three years ago, she began getting more serious.“I enjoy being outdoors, and I’ve always loved driving on country roads,” says Allen. “I have enjoyed the process of trying to improve my work and getting meaningful feedback.”

Her first show in 2006 was a joint venture with plein air painter Jennifer Miller. Allen captured color scenes from four seasons on the Flat River, which runs behind the Rougemont, N.C., home she shares with her husband, Barry, PhD’84.

Allen says her photos, especially nine that are permanently displayed in her clinic, provide an instant connection with the patients she sees in Person County, where she began working in 1987. They serve to both document history and capture the county’s rural heritage.

One photo is of a stone church, Allensville Methodist, where baseball hall of famer Enos Slaughter is buried. “It’s a beautiful church,” says Allen. “A patient told me that his grandfather hauled rocks to build the church. It was right after the Depression, and they didn’t have enough money for wood, so they paid people 25 to 50 cents a day to haul rock.”

Other photos feature old barns, horses, tobacco wagons, roadside signs, trees, and wildflowers.

Allen made the switch to digital photography five years ago when her husband gave her a digital Nikon for her birthday. Although she was reluctant at first, she has come to appreciate the many benefits of digital photography— being able to view photos instantly, share them with friends and family, and print black and white photos herself.

Last year, Allen’s family presented her father with his first digital camera. At 83, he was at first skeptical that he could learn to use it, but now he enjoys printing and e-mailing photos to friends and family. “It’s given him a whole new way of enjoying his pictures,” says Allen.

While most of her photos are landscapes, nature scenes, and rural buildings, Allen says she has also enjoyed taking photos at family weddings and occasionally shoots family portraits for the fellows who train with her. She also uses her prints to make thank you notes, birthday cards, and condolences.“It’s a way that I can give a gift to people who mean something to me—a nice personal touch,” she says.

Allen and her husband have twin children, Peter, a senior in the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and Dorothy, a senior at Bennington College.