Bill Peckmann &Books &Photos 25 Feb 2011 06:38 am
Train Photos
- Bill Peckman sent me some stills from a book of photos by O. Winston Link, Steam, Steel and Stars. They are magnificent pictures that were taken of steam railroads in America from 1955 to 1960. The photos are stunning achievements, and I had to post the images. You can see why Feininger had his attachment to such imagery. Ah, the romance! Judge for yourself.
Many thanks to Bill Peckmann.
The book’s cover.
From the front book flap.
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Here are shots showing the lighting setups done to take the photos.
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Here’s a 2004 newspaper article about
some of these photos that had been stolen.
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on 25 Feb 2011 at 11:12 am 1.Steven said …
The Link Museum is in Roanoke, Virginia — about 40 minutes away from Virginia Tech here in Blacksburg.
http://www.linkmuseum.org/
It’s pretty amazing to see many of the prints (shown above) in their full-sized form. He used a large format camera for all his images… and lugging his equipment around to the remote hills of southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia was no easy task.
Link was in all the major magazines back in the day and his strobe set-up for all the night photos was a sight to behold.
It goes without saying that he was detail-focused, meticulous and created spectacular images.
Y’all should visit the museum if your around here… it’s in an old N&W passenger station designed by Raymond Loewy.
Loewy has a gallery in the Link museum too, showcasing his design “look” and the cool “streamlined” feel he gave everything he designed — fridges, locomotives, cars, etc.
on 25 Feb 2011 at 1:43 pm 2.Eddie Fitzgerald said …
I have that book, and it’s influenced my thinking. The pictures there made me realize that every exterior that’s lit up at night should be lit up dramatically. I mean if we’re going to light anyway, we may as well make the subject look good. It’s in a company’s best interest to make their facility look photogenic when its shut down for the night.
I always thought the space program would get more taxpayer support if the the rockets were designed to look more exciting, and if they were lit more dramatically when standing outside at night.
on 25 Feb 2011 at 7:04 pm 3.Paul Penna said …
Generally more illustrative than artistic – they were mostly taken for commercial applications – but a fascinating hi-res gallery of over 400 photos culled from Library of Congress collections, including some large format Kodachromes from the 1940s, can be seen here:
http://www.shorpy.com/historical-railroad-and-train-photos
Not just shots of trains, but of how rail travel integrated with life in general. A real time machine experience getting lost in the incredible detail in the high-res versions. (Click “View full size” in the captions to see those.)
on 25 Feb 2011 at 11:02 pm 4.Tim Hodge said …
Mr. Link had a cameo in the film “October Sky”. In a brief scene of a train driving by, he is the conductor and waves as he goes by.