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Editor’s Note: Jack Becker, Librarian Emeritus, TTU Libraries, is the curator of Caprock Chronicles. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Today’s feature is authored by Lynn Whitfield, University Archivist at Texas Tech University.
In 1996, Annie Letha Reeves permanently shut down the Reeves Photography Studio, yet not before generously bequeathing the studio’s extensive collection of over 550,000 photographic images to the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. This collection stands as one of the archives’ most valuable assets due to the variety of its topics, particularly its unique representations of Lubbock’s African American and Latino communities from the 1930s to the 1950s. The collection features photographs captured over a continuous period of 60 years.
The Southwest Collection obtained several grants totaling $131,000 to organize and make the 324 boxes accessible, most of which consisted of negative formats. The flooding of Broadway Avenue over the years created preservation challenges for the collection.
Annie, at the age of 81, hoped the collection would return to its roots, to Texas Tech University, where she and her spouse, Samuel Winston Reeves, pursued their education in the 1930s. This collection narrates two lifetimes of visual documentation of West Texas and the romantic journey of an entrepreneurial duo that established a family business.
Reeves acquired his inaugural camera during his junior year at Plainview High School in 1930. Born in Oklahoma on November 5, 1913, he and his family moved to Tulia, Texas, in 1915, the same year his future wife was born in Brownfield. Later, his cherished Model T Ford took him to Texas Tech in 1933 to pursue industrial engineering.
His reliable camera accompanied him everywhere, making it natural for him to join the yearbook team as a photographer. Winston served as the editor of the 1937 La Ventana “Candid Camera Edition,” the first Tech yearbook to achieve All-American recognition from the National Scholastic Press Association. Additionally, Reeves played the French Horn and participated in the Matador Band, which later became known as the Goin’ Band, under the direction of bandmaster Dewey O. Wiley, from 1934 to 1936. He recorded the band’s travels to California for the Texas Tech versus Loyola football game in 1934.
One of his finest photographs from these trips features the uniformed band waiting outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, captured from a building across the street. Only forty individuals were selected for the band trip, and it would be another three years before women were permitted to join the marching band.
In September 1937, he was appointed by Tech to teach a press photography course for two semesters, marking it as the first course added to the newly formed Journalism Department.
During Winston’s initial academic year at Tech, three professional photography studios were operational in Lubbock. To fund his education, Winston worked as a freelance photographer and took on piecework for Daniel Studios for two years and Tech Studio for an additional year. In 1936, the young entrepreneur inaugurated his own photoengraving studio from a garage apartment, one of many ventures he would embark on until his premature passing at the age of 51 in 1965.
He and Annie were a well-known couple on campus during their five years of courtship, with him carrying his camera and her lugging a large bag of flash bulbs. They married in 1938 shortly after her graduation and later welcomed two sons, Sammy and Robert. Although he became the face of the business, it was genuinely a family endeavor. He managed the photography, while Annie oversaw financial affairs, scheduled photo sessions, developed the project numbering system, and operated the shop.
The original studio located at 1719 Broadway was established with the assistance of Lubbock contractor, W. G. McMillan, and businessman Mark Halsey. Both names were included on Reeves’ bank note to facilitate equipment purchases as required. Halsey incorporated a photography section into his drug store, for which Reeves developed the images. Reeves Studio officially opened on October 31, 1937, with a workforce of 16 employees.
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal proposed to provide equipment funding if Winston would establish the first photoengraving lab in the county. In exchange, Reeves was to offset the startup expenses by completing assignments for the AJ. It is quite possible that some images from this era, labeled under the generic byline “staff photo,” were captured by Winston or his team member Gene Knox, who also contributed to the AJ. For several years, Texas Tech continued to enlist Reeves Studio for campus and yearbook photography.
During World War II, Winston took on the role of a paid flight instructor at the Lubbock Municipal Airport and Dagley Field. Additionally, he and his associate Roy O’Neal marketed Cub planes at the airport. Aerial photography became one of his key areas of expertise. While Winston piloted the aircraft, Annie along with her team of three college-age women assisted the war effort by visiting the airbase to capture yearbook portraits.
To view examples of the studio’s images, visit https://hdl.handle.net/10605/16706.
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