O. Winston Link

A first edition copy of O. Winston Link's first publication, with a vintage print of the cover image.

• Sold as a set of 2 items: a book and a print.
• O. Winston Link (American).
• Roanoke, Virginia: Norfolk and Western Railway, 1957.
• 16 pages.
• Oblong quarto.
• Includes black-and-white photographs and a map printed in relief halftone.
• Accompanied by a vintage gelatin silver print, J. R. Harrell, Powhatan Arrow engineer, with Link's early "Owl" studio hand stamp, his copyright stamp and an inventory notation in pencil, on verso.
• Wire-stitched photo-illustrated wrappers printed in yellow.

In the mid-1950s, Norfolk & Western was one of the few remaining American railroad companies that continued to use steam instead of diesel-powered engines. Between 1955 and May 1960, when the last steam engine ran, Link documented the final years of the steam engine and the erosion of the American rural landscape. While working as a successful, technically accomplished industrial photographer, he experimented with complicated lighting setups to photograph trains at night in his spare time. Having a lifelong love of trains, he submitted a proposal to the head of the Norfolk & Western Railway asking permission to photograph at night the trains, people and buildings along the route, which ran from Norfolk, Virginia, to Cincinnati and Columbus and the North-South lines, which crossed it. "Night Trick" is the name given to the night shift by those railmen working it.