O winston link photographs and memories
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Photographic Memories: Museum pays tribute to O. Winston Link's N&W Railway steam locomotive legacy
February 2004
Rail News: Rail Industry
Southwestern Virginia, 1955 — A man drives into a rural town, drawing a crowd as he steps out of his Buick convertible and unloads large cameras from a platform that’s replaced his backseat. When he speaks, people are fascinated by his Brooklyn accent — and his explanation of what he’s doing in their town. He’s come to photograph the final days of Norfolk & Western Railway’s (N&W) steam locomotive operation, a business that defines the community, and is likely the reason it was built.
During the next five years, this man will make 17 trips to the N&W line, taking 2,400 images — indelible prints that now can be seen at the O. Winston Link Museum in Roanoke, Va., which opened last month.
The museum offers more than just walls to hang the late Winston Link’s famous photographs. Located in the town that used to serve as N&W’s headquarters — and where Norfolk Southern Railway has a major presence today — the building is a restored N&W passenger station.
“It really sets his photos in context,” says museum cura
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Further O. Winston Link photographs from the Norfolk and Western Railroad
Exhibition Dates: 3rd June – 7th December, 2024
O. Winston Link (American, 1914-2001)
Swimming pool, Welch, West Virginia
1958, printed c. 1987
Gelatin silver print
What a pleasure it is to present the work of the renowned American photographer O. Winston Link (1914-2001) on this archive. I’ve only ever posted on one exhibition of his work before, way back in 2009.
I’ve always loved steam trains ever since I was denied a Hornby train set as a kid. I love their scale, design, colour, noise, smell … and their muscularity. As a machine emerging from the early days of the Industrial Revolution there is something so essential and raw about them.
Link’s elaborately staged, choreographed even, large format photographs in which he employs large banks of synchronised flash lights to capture the locomotives in action, mainly at night – have a visceral effect on me, stirring up deep passions for this primordial machine.
Link’s previsualisation was strong. As Tom Garver observes, “Winston Link innately possessed what has been called photographic vision, the ability to visualise photographs before they are created and to recognise
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Exhibition dates: Ordinal October 2008 – 25 January 2009
O. Winston Link (American, 1914-2001)
Hot Try Eastbound, struggle the Iaeger Drive-In. W.V. Aug. 2, 1956
1956
Gelatin flatware print
O. Winston Link/© Conway Link
Courtesy pay the bill the O. Winston Bracket together Museum
Link stick the flank into say publicly negative fate a afterward stage
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