The Call of Trains
Railroad Photographs by Jim Shaughnessy
Published on 26. August 2008
Book
Hardback
978-0-393-06592-3 (ISBN)
Description
Jim Shaughnessy is a revered name among railroad photographers. This collection, the best of his work over a forty-year career, features 170 duotone photographs taken between 1946 and 1988, with an emphasis on the railroad culture of the fifties and sixties. Jeff Brouws-a railroad authority and photo historian-has contributed a biographical essay that traces Shaughnessy's beginnings photographing steam locomotives in his hometown of Troy, New York, to his documentation of the dramatic steam-to-diesel transition, with an emphasis on the northeastern United States and Canada, where the concentration of railroad action and often deep snow resulted in beautiful and unusual images.
Not just a compendium of photographs of locomotives, this book covers the whole railroad world-the sheds, tunnels, viaducts, yard stations, and more. It is a wonderful document of what is arguably railroading's most compelling era.
Not just a compendium of photographs of locomotives, this book covers the whole railroad world-the sheds, tunnels, viaducts, yard stations, and more. It is a wonderful document of what is arguably railroading's most compelling era.
Reviews / Votes
"Shaughnessy is an artist...capable of achieving a shining lineation reminiscent of fine-point engraving and of rendering roiling masses of steam and smoke as charged as a running dog in a futurist painting, of dignified stillness and enveloping motion. Appearing on full pages of this oversize volume, his pictures are engrossing, stunning masterpieces of photodocumentation." -- Ray Olson - BooklistMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Illustrations
170 duotone photographs
Dimensions
Height: 282 mm
Width: 310 mm
Thickness: 25 mm
Weight
1839 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-393-06592-3 (9780393065923)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jeff Brouws is a fine art photographer and part-time writer who has nine books to his credit, authoring five on railroad photography alone. He has been published in Trains, the NRHS Bulletin and the R&LHS Quarterly. A book of his own photographs, Approaching Nowhere (also from W. W. Norton) was published in 2006. His photographs can be found in major institutional collections around the country including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Harvard's Fogg Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.