Time-lapse philanthropy

On Jan. 19, 2014, at 11:19 p.m., a desperate voice rang out on social media: “I haven’t felt this helpless in a long time … I honestly don’t know what to do.”

Earlier that night, 20-year-old Conner Allen, a photographer and Spokane native, had made a 20-minute stop at the Satellite Diner in downtown Spokane. When he and a friend returned to their car, they made a heart-stopping discovery: The windows of his friend’s car had been busted out, the vehicle had been ransacked. The tools of his trade – his camera and gear – were gone.

Standing on the side of the street, Allen slowly accepted a sad reality.

He had lost everything.

In a subsequent late night post on Facebook, Allen pleaded with friends to keep an eye out for his missing gear. “I hope whoever stole it needed it beyond all means and they had a family to feed or something,” read the post. “I worked for years for that camera. I still don’t have it paid off … I’m literally dead in the water.”

With a long list of “to do’s” ahead, and five booked weddings to shoot – one in San Francisco – Conner stood helpless.

He describes the feeling of pain and loss he felt when he came to the realization that his camera had been stolen: “I imagine (it’s) the same feeling as freezing to death,” he explains, “slowly going numb and then all I wanted to do was go to sleep.”

“A medium of art that is a privilege …”

Although you may not recognize Conner Allen on the street, either by name or by face, you’ve likely seen his work – perhaps on a billboard in Spokane, between the covers of a magazine, or shared, liked and reposted among friends and strangers on social media – his work always preceding him.

Allen has been a fixture in Spokane’s artistic community for quite a few years now. “I started out wanting to become a fine arts major,” he said. “I wanted to become a curator for museums and clients.”

But in 2010, in his junior year of high school, Allen took a film class and, as he puts it, “fell in love with photography.” He cut his teeth with an old film camera before moving his way up. Now, just four years later, he wields a portfolio of vivid images, his work ecompassing different styles – from conceptual wedding and portrait photography, to projects that are a little more edgy and experimental.

Nearly a year ago, Allen decided to take the leap and move into photography full-time. The choice has rewarded him with several career milestones already: his photos have been featured in 23 printed publications, including one of the world’s top fashion magazines, Vogue Italia.

Although like any form of self-employment, Allen said, work ebbs and flows from busy and demanding, to not so much. He is finding relative success at just age 21.

Always on Allen’s mind is a quote by one of his biggest influences, filmmaker and literary icon Susan Sontag: “The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, eventually in one’s own.”

“Sontag made photography one of the clearest things in my life through her essay ‘On Photography,’ ” Allen said. “Photography is a medium of art that is a privilege in the sense that you are literally a tourist in someone’s reality, capturing their life and portraying it back to them, so they have a feeling of this past that they cling to hold onto.”

He aims to see it all through a lens of humility. “It’s a very humbling feeling,” he added, “to be a part of someone’s life for a brief moment, and then offer them themselves in a photo, and seeing their reaction.”

“The community I built myself around …”

Because he is such a valued fixture in the artistic arena – and because his outlook is modest and congenial – Allen shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was by what happened next. As it happens, he was astonished.

The morning after the theft, Allen awoke to a full-blown rally of support from the artistic community here and beyond.

“By the time I woke up the next morning,” he recounts, “there was even a group that wanted to start a fundraiser. People started offering condolences, offering to let me borrow their gear and even to donate money to help me buy another camera. I had people I’d never met researching, eBaying and Craigslisting, trying to help in any way possible.” CustomSLR, a company that manufactures accessories for photographers, sent Allen a brand new tripod and camera strap as a care package for losing all his gear.

“The community I built myself around was outpouring in its support and help,” he said.

Two days after the theft, Allen’s doorbell rang. It was UPS. The carrier presented him with a parcel much larger than he expected – he had been waiting for some smaller items to be delivered – and asked him to sign for it. Thinking nothing of it, he brought the package inside and opened it.

Over the previous couple days, Allen had received countless notes, text messages, tweets and shout-outs on Facebook, but none quite like this. At the top of the package was a note from a friend and fellow photographer, Shana Rae Rosengarten of Virginia. Underneath was a brand new Nikon D600, the exact camera that had been stolen from him just days earlier.

“At this point I was hysterical,” he said. “I just kept rereading and rereading the letter, amazed at how kind and generous this person was. I couldn’t believe it!”

Only a matter of hours after receiving his new camera, someone from Spokane called Allen. ‘I know you just got a new camera,’ they said, ‘and I’d like to give you a lens. Take it, I just don’t want to be named.’

“It turned out to be a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4,” he said, “and it is just the perfect lens, exactly what I was using before.”

All of this happened in 72 hours; Allen had gone from “dead in the water” to being back – almost by some miracle – to where he had been just three grueling days before.

Conner Allen was back on top.

What the future holds

Allen’s plans for the near future are by no means one-dimensional. He plans to expand his horizons, not just from an artistic standpoint, but from a business standpoint, which he admits is an area he is still learning to navigate.

Aside from building a larger client base, Allen plans to expand in a few different directions. “I want to start teaching more,” he says, “and I want to start writing for photography blogs.” With only four months of 2014 left, the start of autumn seems to find Allen busier than ever, with no signs of slowing down in the days or months to come. With booking after booking dotting his calendar, and still more on the long list of “can you fit me in’s?” Allen never knows where he’ll find himself, other than on the road with a Subaru packed with gear, headed to the next place, the next shoot.

‘A tourist in other people’s realities’

Allen’s experience with the Inland Northwest artistic community, in light of the traumatic loss that kicked off his year, has done nothing if not motivate him to continue growing and evolving as an artist and photographer, moving full steam ahead, as it were, to whatever the future holds for him.

You’re going to be seeing a lot more of Conner Allen.

Some would call his a cautionary tale; others a story of inspiration. But at its roots, Allen’s experience is a testament to the good in people and a reminder that amid any wasteland of hopelessness, there will always be an oasis of human kindness to raise us up.

Months later, Allen still remembers opening the note that accompanied his new camera, and reading it. “I immediately started crying,” he recalls.

Atop a brand new Nikon D600 the note, inscribed in Rosengarten’s friendly handwriting, read: “Please accept this gift as a reminder that in our industry and in this world there is far more beauty than ugliness. And that sometimes you don’t have to go looking for it … because it will find you.”