The photographs of Jack Delano have been featured before on this blog, and these were the documentary images of and around the railway. This is a slightly different subject matter and style of photography. There are a few different variations of this scene on the Library of Congress website, but this one just works best…
Category: Film Photography
#379 – Locomotive and a watertower at the Erie Railroad yards, Jersey City
This was a bit of a one off in the New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection on the Library of Congress website. It doesn’t appear to be part of a series and I can find no other railway photographs in the same collection. But it’s a good ‘un nonethless, even though it’s needed…
#368 – Library of Congress Images – a trip on the Santa Fe in Black & White
People talk about how in the digital age, there is a lot of ‘machine gunning’ of scenes with dozens of photographs taken, and not all with a great deal of care and attention. In looking through the photographs of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railway it seems that the practice wasn’t unheard of in…
#367 – Library of Congress Images – Santa Fe in Black & White
Going up? Or down? Wheel shop. Not sure what the significance of the white painted ones are – dummy ones for works use only? Or maybe ones that are waiting for machining / new tyres? This almost has a production line-like feel to it. The workshop is clearly quite large and by british standards quite modern. Interesting to…
#366 – Library of Congress Images – Santa Fe in colour
A few more images of the Chicago and North Western railway to complement those I blogged recently. In some respects, the outside environment probably suits the film better (Kodak Safety Film again), as by modern standards it…
#365 – Library of Congress Images – Chicago Railway Yard
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045480/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001024/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001028/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045487/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001045474/PP/resource/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001046046/PP/resource/ Having explored inside the railway works, Jack Delano continued his documentation of the Chicago and North Western outside in the switching (shunting) yards. One tends to forget the enormous size of American steam locos until you see them with people next to them, and those depicted in these…
#363 – Library of Congress Images – Chicago Railway Workshops in Colour
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000703/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000725/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000693/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000724/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000693/PP/ http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992000647/PP/ In my nightschool studies of the history of photography, we…
#297 – Ratten Clough Barn, Brinscall
I used to live in the village of Brinscall, a small slightly industrial village on the edge of Chorley. It’s notable primarily for its swimming pool, an unusual facility for a rural village with a small population, but you’d be surprised at how many people I meet who claim to have learnt how to swim…
#290 – Book Review – Detroit Disassembled
Andrew Moore’s ‘Detroit Disassembled’ is a book that’s been on my wish list for a couple of years now. I’d discovered it just after it came out, as it was released at a similar time to the eye-wateringly expensive ‘The Ruins Of Detroit’ by Yves Marchand, but at about half the price. It’s certainly got…
#264 – Recommendation – Poundland £1 Kodak Film
Boo! Everytime I walk past the Poundland shop in my local town centre, I always remember the Trigger Happy TV sketch where Dom Jolly walks round a pound store asking how much everything is to the increasing exasperation of the shop assistant, it goes something like this: “So how much is this?” “A pound” “What about…
Mechanical Landscapes 